Chapter 6, 7 and 8 probed three sets of the quasi-alliance between outside powers and the Middle East countries during the Cold War. Chapter 9 aims to investigate the quasi-alliance among Middle Eastern regional countries. Ethnic and sectarian conflicts in the Middle East are deep-rooted and complicated as always, so the leaders have to seek support for their struggles with other countries.

As a means of security cooperation, quasi-alliance exists not only between outside powers and the Middle Eastern countries, such as US-Saudi Arabia, USIsrael, US-Kuwait, the quasi-alliances of Soviet-Egypt, Soviet-Syria, Soviet-Iraq, and the quasi-alliance between France, U.K and Israel; within the region, quasi-alliances of Israel-Turkey, Israel-Jordan, Egypt-Saudi Arabia and Iran-Syria since 1919 were also worthy of research. The cooperation between world powers and Middle Eastern countries has always been the focus of international security academia, but research on security cooperation among Middle Eastern countries is scant. The conflicts between great powers, between Jews and Muslims, among Arabs, between the “radical” and “moderate” forces are intertwined. Therefore, the security rivalry in the Middle East is essentially a game of seeking and opposing hegemony, and the competition for allies and quasi-allies. Countries that have the same or similar strategic objectives with common concerns may form a coalition, the Iran-Syria quasi-alliance being the product of this logic.

Damascus and Tehran have maintained an all-round cooperation in economy, politics and security since 1979. Current literature on Iran-Syria relations suggests that, owing to their close-knit security ties, Syria and Iran are an indisputable military alliance like US-Japan or US-Korea. Nevertheless, there is no denying the fact that Syria and Iran have never signed a formal military treaty, and their security cooperation is not based on a formal military pact, but on a series of informal security arrangements. As Charles W. Kegley and Eugene R. Wittkopf put it, “alliances usually form when two or more states face a common security threat. They are formal agreements among states to coordinate their behavior.” Hence, Iran-Syria relations, undoubtedly, cannot meet the condition of “formal alliance”. This chapter attempts to put forward a hypothesis of “quasi-alliance”.