Epstein Secrets

U.S., Turkish and Saudi intelligence officers on the ground — and this new front reaching out to moderate Alawites and Christians who supported the Assads out of fear and agreeing to build a new order together that protects majority and minority rights. It would be wonderful to see the tyrannical Assa

mean that we have reached the end by any means, but it does mean that the precondition has been met for the fall of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. We have argued that so long as the military and security apparatus remain intact and effective, the regime could endure. Although they continue to

; by its attack on Syria's nuclear facility in 2007; and by its bid to destroy Hamas in its murderous assault on Gaza in 2008-9. From the start of Bashar al-Asad's presidency, Syria has faced relentless efforts by Israel and its complicit American ally to bring down the so- called `resistance axis' of Tehran-Da

Syria is that Turkey has had to reconsider its policy toward countries on its periphery. In the case of Iraq, Turkey has an interest in suppressing the Kurdistan Workers' Party militants who have taken refuge there and defending oil and other economic interests. Turkey's strategy is moving from avoiding all confrontations

3 only drama playing out there. Syria is also a highly tribalized and sectarian-divided country. Its Shiite-leaning Alawite minority — led by the Assads and comprising 12 percent of the population — dominates the government, army and security services. Sunni-Muslim Syrian Arabs are 75 percent, Chris

n ever. The regional balance of power is shifting against Tehran, in no small part because of its ongoing support for the beleaguered government of Bashar al- Assad in Syria. The Assad regime is failing, and in time, Iran will lose its only state ally in the Arab world and its conduit for arming the m

an continued its support for the Assad regime and backed his brutal crackdown on civilians. The Syrian uprising has become a zero-sum game: Either Bashar al-Assad will win, or the demonstrators will triumph. Likewise, it has become a proxy war between Tehran and Ankara, in which there will be only one winner.

and trade boomed. Meanwhile, shared objections to the Iraq War appeared to bind the Turks and the Iranians. Iran even stopped harboring rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or P.K.K., which it had encouraged to attack Turkey because of Ankara's pro-Western stance. After the Iraq War, Tehran began bombing the very P.K

from the start, then, the feeling is, it did little to show it was taking the matter seriously. The appearance is of an Ankara that was so fixed on Bashar al-Assad's departure that other matters were never considered properly. The sad fact in all this that Turkey is nowhere nearer today than it was 10 or 15 yea

nal state ally is Syria, but President Bashar al-Assad would not be able to direct his armed forces to

this will pave, in time, the way to a "Greater Kurdistan" that will also incorporate much of Southeast Anatolia. Given that separatist terrorism by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has peaked since spring, it is not surprising that every body bag containing the EFTA00713714 remains of a Turkish conscript killed by this