He called the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat “the son of 60,000 whores”, charged Jordan with “Judaising” its citizens, accused Turkey of collaborating with “the enemies of the Arabs” and blamed the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad for the 9/11 attacks on the US. Diplomacy was not, perhaps, the strongest suit of Mustafa Tlass, the Syrian defence minister from 1972 until 2004, who has died aged 85.
He professed his love for Madonna, Jennifer Lopez and Gina Lollobrigida, in 1983 he marvelled at how a Beirut bomber had “succeeded in sending 200 American Marines to hell”, and he openly demanded that Syria should absorb Lebanon.
Loose cannon though he was, Tlass was nevertheless for many years a pillar of the Ba’ath party establishment, and his influential economic networks spanned Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. He was unerringly loyal to Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian president for three decades, and after Assad’s death in 2000 helped secure power for his son, Bashar. Tlass had been due to retire in 2002, but the grateful Bashar responded by reappointing him defence minister, despite US protests.