Hafez al-Assad was a Syrian military officer and politician who served as President of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. He founded the Assad family's rule through the Ba'ath Party and established an authoritarian regime. A key figure in the 1963 Ba'athist coup, he later consolidated power through the 1970 Corrective Movement, centralizing control within his family and the Alawite minority. His nearly 30-year presidency was marked by a strong security state, regional confrontation with Israel, intervention in Lebanon, and suppression of domestic opposition, most notably the 1982 Hama massacre. During the Cold War, he pursued a foreign policy aligned with the Soviet Union and maintained Syria's strategic position in the Arab-Israeli conflict.