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Led program of regime change to overcome it. S. imperialist goals. S. S. business interests. S. S. global hegemony. The Islamic revolutionaries in Tehran, like their Arab nationalist allies in Damascus, also vehemently rejected Washington’s self-declared global leadership role, and similarly favored robust state intervention in the economy. Indeed, Iran’s revolutionaries defined Iran’s private sector as subordinate and subservient to the state sector—an anathema from the perspective of Washington’s Wall Street-defined economic orthodoxy.

Syria was ruled by Arab nationalists after military officers belonging to the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party staged a coup d’état in 1963. Committed to unity of the Arab nation, freedom from outside domination, and Arab socialism, Ba’athists posed an ideological challenge within the Arab world to the United States and its Western allies, as well as to Israel, and to the Arab monarchies which were integrated into the United States’ informal empire. Ba’athists, such as Bashar al-Assad, threatened the United States and its Western allies in distal and proximal ways.

The influence of business agendas may be even more strongly felt in foreign than domestic policy because ordinary citizens are less likely to be interested in foreign policy issues, or to perceive foreign policy linkages to their everyday lives. As a consequence, they’re less likely to mount opposition to foreign policy agendas which serve corporate interests at their expense than they are to oppose domestic policies which encroach upon their immediate economic interests. S. S. S. public. S. imperialism, four ideologies played major roles in Wall Street’s war on the Syrian governments of both Bashar al-Assad, and his father, Hafez.