Major General Hisham Ikhtiyar (Arabic: هشام اختيار); 1941 – 20 July 2012) (family name also transliterated as Ikhtiar, Bakhtiar, Bekhityar, Bekhtyar and other variants) was a Syrian military official, and a national security adviser to president Bashar al-Assad.

[10] In 2006, the United States Treasury Department announced that American citizens and organizations were forbidden from engaging in any transactions with Ikhtiyar, for "significantly contributing to the Syrian Government's support for designated terrorist organizations",[11] and in 2007, Ikhtiyar's name was added to a list of Syrians barred from entering American territory.

The brutal crackdown launched by the security services in the southern city helped trigger the subsequent nationwide unrest.

The Free Syrian Army's Damascus council said they believed at least six out of the eight members, including Hasan Turkmani, Assef Shawkat, Mohammad al-Shaar, Daoud Rajha, Hisham Ikhtiyar and Mohammed Saeed Bekheitan, to have been killed.

Mohammad al-Shaar, then interior minister, and Hasan Turkmani, then assistant vice president, denied their own deaths to State TV, calling it "categorically baseless".