You might be right about Lebanon, but even if Syria is much weaker than it used to be, nothing happen within that country without the leaders knowing it and especially such a huge gathering of people. I suspect Syria had another agenda:

1. To delude the domestic resentments towards an external issue.

2.  To show the "West" that "you can not bully us that easily," using smaller Scandinavian countries as their point of example.

3.  They sympathized with the people in their anger.
   

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