Some considered it the link between Damascus and Tehran

Walid al-Muallem ... a veteran diplomat and the front of the Syrian regime during the war

• Al-Muallem when he recently participated in the refugee return conference organized by Damascus with Russian support.

  EPA

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Walid al-Muallem, Minister of Foreign Affairs and a veteran diplomat who died yesterday at the age of 79, was one of the most prominent faces and defenders of the Syrian regime, and the only official who kept an important portfolio in the successive governments during the devastating years of war.

The last public appearance of the teacher, who held the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs 14 years ago, was last Wednesday, at the opening of the conference for the return of refugees organized by Damascus with Russian support.

He seemed tired and in poor health, which required two people to help him enter the meeting room.

Al-Muallem joined the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1964, a year after graduating from Cairo University with a BA in Economics and Political Science.

He traveled in several diplomatic assignments outside the country before his appointment as Ambassador of Damascus to Washington between 1990 and 1999, the period during which the Arab-Syrian peace negotiations with Israel.

The file of relations with Beirut

In 2005, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and assigned to manage the Syrian-Lebanese relations file, during a very difficult period that witnessed the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the accusation against Damascus for his assassination.

Hariri's last meeting with al-Muallem was on February 1, 2005, in Beirut, and was characterized by tension, according to excerpts of him leaked on social networking sites after Hariri's killing.

Al-Muallem was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2006, and since 2012 he has also held the position of Deputy Prime Minister.

And the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs states on its website that Syria has made a "breakthrough in an attempt to isolate it" since Al-Muallem took office.

During the years of conflict that broke out in mid-March 2011, al-Muallem formed a façade for the regime, and kept his position despite changing governments and ministers.

He always repeated that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad "will remain in his position" as long as the people want him.

He was among the first to describe opponents of the regime as "terrorists", and among the fiercest critics of Kurdish fighters for having received support from Washington.

sanctions

Months after the outbreak of the conflict in his country, the United States imposed, at the end of August 2011, sanctions on the teacher who said that he was "trying to hide the terrorist acts of the regime and spread lies", as an American official described him at the time as "the link between Damascus and Tehran."

During the war years, his declared foreign visits were limited to a limited number of countries, most notably Russia and Iran, the two main supporters of his country.

Al-Muallem was known for his calm tone and coolness even in the most difficult stages of the war. He often spoke slowly. He was among the first officials to consider the Syrian protests as an external “conspiracy” against his country as a pillar in the “axis of resistance”.

He was also known during his long press conferences for his mocking stances against Damascus’s opponents, especially the West, which imposed sanctions on his country.

During a press conference in Damascus in 2016, Al-Muallem said, "We will forget that there is Europe on the map, and we will go south, east and west."

In September 2019, Al-Muallem responded to a question by a journalist related to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, by saying, “Who is Pompeo?

I do not know him".

On June 23, 2020, confusion arose due to a statement made by Al-Muallem during a press conference he held in Damascus to comment on the US Caesar Act, in which he confirmed the validity of the news about US President Donald Trump's request to communicate with Assad to discuss the file of American hostages in Syria, after which he issued a denial statement. From the Foreign Ministry, in what appeared to be a denial of the teacher's account.

The teacher was born in Damascus in 1941, married with three children, and has four books on “Palestine and Armed Peace 1970” and “Syria in the Mandate Period from 1917 to 1948”, in addition to “Syria from Independence to Unity from 1948 to 1948”. The year 1958 »and« the world and the Middle East in the American perspective ».

• Al-Muallem was among the first officials to consider the Syrian protests as a foreign “conspiracy” against his country, as a pillar in the “axis of resistance”.

• During a press conference in Damascus in 2016, Al-Muallem said: “We will forget that there is Europe on the map, and we will go south, east and west.”

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