Epstein Secrets

East" there is that age-old instinct for reading the wind and riding with the victor. It had taken some five months for President Obama to call on Bashar al- Assad to relinquish power, but once that call was made we were reduced to mere spectators of the Syrian calamity. We exaggerated the might of th

nic ambitions of Iranian theocracy, and an Iraq in the orbit of U.S. power would have been less likely to cast its fate with the embattled House of Assad in Syria. For a year now, the people of Syria have been in the midst of a heroic struggle against a tyrannical regime, but no American help has com

d. Shater's entry into the Presidential race just introduces one more wild card into this loaded deck. At least Egyptian politics won't be boring. Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. The Daily-News Egypt Al-Shater nomination s

ikolas Gvosdcv 03 Feb 2012 -- Now that the United States, France and other Western powers have endorsed the Arab League's call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down -- even if that formulation is ultimately edited out of the final draft of the resolution pending before the •. Security Council -- it

ship of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the more he looks like a person buying a round-trip ticket on the Titanic — after it has already hit the iceberg. Assad is a dead man walking. Even if all you care about are arms sales, wouldn't Russia want to align itself with the emerging forces in Syria? "There i

rs to plan for a post-Taliban Afghanistan? And does this mean revisiting Russia's offer to broker talks between Assad loyalists and the opposition? Marc Lynch has argued that "more could be done to plan for a post-Assad future and to communicate to terrified Syrians sitting on the fence that they have a p

ts former secretary-general. The latest failure of the U.N. dream was Annan's mediating mission to Syria. For months, he tried to cajole President Bashar al-Assad into stopping the killing and starting a political transition that would avert civil war. To which he received the standard answer to well-meaning

Abdullah of Jordan back in 2004 of the danger of a Shia Crescent that would extend from the coast of Lebanon to Afghanistan. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad in Syria, and the Shia- controlled government of Iraq form the links in the chain. When the Arab Spring reached Syria, the leaders in Riyadh were gi

esident "must learn to live with a certain amount of criticism." Before going any further, let me stipulate that I agree with my colleague and pal, Marc Lynch, who has pointed out that because Egypt is so polarized that whatever Morsi, the FJP, and the Brothers do, someone is going to see it as sinister.

involve a loose coalition of Sunnis including elements of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. Though Israel far preferred Syrian President Bashar al Assad to them, al Assad himself was shifting his behavior. The more pressure he came under, the more he became dependent on Iran. Israel began facing the

FTA_R1_00298505 EFTA01884024 regime of the al Assad family is in serious trouble. As mentioned, the

mic state. Sobriety militates against such final or definitive conclusions, however. Indeed, George Washington University Arab-politics specialist Marc Lynch offered a sage tweet-length rule of thumb for analyzing Egyptian political developments: "It's never as bad as its seems on Twitter." Power in Egy