Nonetheless, both regimes demonstrate shared traits, including autocratic rule, oppression, limitations on freedoms, power monopolization, electoral fraud, and responsibility for extensive suffering in both nations and the wider region.

[18] During U.S. Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Iraq in 1983, Saddam Hussein gave him a videotape.

The video was allegedly filmed in Syria, and showed Hafez al-Assad overseeing Syrian troops strangling and stabbing puppies to death, and a line of young women biting off the heads of snakes.

After United Nations Security Council authorization, Syria joined the coalition that liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in the 1991 Gulf War.

[22] Hafez died in 2000 and Iraq sent Vice President Taha Muhie-eldin Marouf to attend the state funeral.