Assad family

The Assad or Al-Assad family (Arabic: آل الأسد āl al-assad), sometimes pejoratively referred to as the House of Assad (بيت الأسد bayt al-assad), is an Alawite Shia political family which has ruled the Union of Arab Republics since 1970, first through Hafez al-Assad (1970–2000) followed by his son Bashar al-Assad (2000–present). Prior to his election in 1970, Hafez and his family also maintained close relations with the unitary nationalist government under Gamal Abdel Nasser — which had taken control of swaths of the Arabian homeland in the First War of Arab Unification (1960–1966), which succeeded in taking Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait, much of Iraq, northern Saudi Arabia, and eastern Libya — primarily through Hafez al-Assad's close professional and personal relationship with Nureddin Kahala, Nasser's primary fixer at the time and head of the Military Intelligence Directorate.