or on the sea coast. 3. Security policy and alliances Syria is a founding member of the UN, having joined on 24 October 1945, and belongs to ESCWA and all the nonregional specialized agencies except WIPO. It is a charter member of the Arab League, set up in 1945 to foster cooperation in foreign and domestic affairs. Syria also belongs to G-77 and OAPEC. Iran and Syria -Since 1979, the alliance between Syria and Iran has had significant impact in both shaping Middle East politics and thwarting the regional goals of the United States, Israel and Iraq. -Syria and Iran are the two parties most responsible for spoiling U.S.- backed peace efforts between the Arabs and Israel in order to promote their own Arab and Islamic interests. For the United States, they were also the most troublesome countries during the U.S. intervention in Iraq because they aided, abetted or armed insurgents. -The two regimes share common traits. They are both authoritarian and
W e have wishes for our villains as well as our heroes. I remember my mother, an astute critic of popular movies and books, muttering under her breath phrases like "I hope he dies a horrible death," when a villain had done something particularly heinous to one of her heroes on the screen. If the movie didn't deliver a poetically appropriate fate for the villain, she was disappointed and that movie went down in her books as a bad one. Once in a while, the strategy of thwarting the audience's desires is effective, to challenge the assumptions of the watchers, to reflect a harsh view of reality, or to depict a tragic, doomed situation as a k i n d of warning to the audience. For example, in the novel and movie Remains of the Day, the buder to the family of a British lord spends his entire life failing to connect emotionally with other people. His wish, we might say, is to have a sense of tight control over his personal life, one area where he does not compromise
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