Epstein Secrets

rtunity the regime once possessed is being jeopardised by its actions. Brutal repression has overshadowed belated, half-hearted reform suggestions; Bashar has squandered credibility; his regime has lost much of the legitimacy derived from its foreign policy. The international community, largely from

t did not have to be so. The protest movement is strong and getting stronger but yet to reach critical mass. Unlike toppled Arab leaders, President Bashar Assad enjoyed some genuine popularity. Many Syrians dread chaos and their nation's fragmentation. But whatever opportunity the regime once possessed is

ss. Unlike toppled Arab leaders, President Bashar Assad enjoyed some genuine popularity. Many Syrians dr

e of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad should be understood in the context of Iran's internal rivalries. Since the death in 1989 of the revolution's father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — whose austere nature and anti-Americanism set the tenor for Iran's post-monarchic order — Tehran's political elite has been broadly divided into

e missiles, followed by self- congratulation and an attempt to change the topic. It would not work here. A minority regime fighting for its life, as Bashar al- Assad's is, can weather a couple of dozen big bangs. More important, no one — friends, enemies or neutrals — would be fooled. As weak as the Un

put his credibility on the line irrevocably and inescapably; second, he now must take direct military action to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad, though not in a manner that commits him to further use of force; and third, he needs to combine whatever force he uses now with dramatic and dipl

opposition to doing so (60 percent) among polled Americans, and a growing and potent consensus among foreign policy experts and politicians to give Assad a hard punch. Most administration officials and most Americans just can't see any lasting benefits from any form of direct U.S. military involveme

ood. And in Iran in 1979, individuals who were ardent secular nationalists donned Islamic garb and supported the Islamic Revolution and its leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. For them, Islam became a more potent outlet for nationalist ambitions than the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had lost political legitimacy. Th

le, including by the repeated use of chemical weapons, and yet has remarkably culminated in the re- legitimization of the person responsible for it, Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian civil war— particularly the White House's inept and improvisational response to it—has accidentally transformed Putin into a major powe

military aid to moderate groups in the Syrian opposition, enough to raise their hopes but not enough to ensure success on the battlefield. And when Assad used chemical weapons against civilian neighborhoods, Obama threatened military action — only to back off, again dashing the hopes of pro-U.S. fact

, and Bahrain. Although Iranian-Saudi enmity dates back many decades, it became acute after the 1979 Islamic Revolution when Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, began to spread his revolutionary brand of Shia Islam across the region. The impact was not immediately evident. Iran's war with Iraq in the 1980