Epstein Secrets

b Spring. Emboldened by the fall of the pro-American Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Tehran has subsequently watched with disquiet the isolation of Syria's Bashar al-Assad and the potential loss of llamas, not to mention the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Liberation Mythology Presumably, the Iranian regime can a

e. The harder they squeeze Syria, the more likely they are to anger the other non-Arab power with regional ambitions, Iran, which remains loyal to Assad. And Assad could retaliate by fomenting unrest within Turkey's borders. The result has been a diplomatic and public relations nightmare for Turkey

aying a tactical game in which he calculates how far he can go each day without incurring the collective wrath of the international community, said Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. More than 7,500 people have been killed in the uprising. Turkey also must weigh ot

ary 29, 2012 -- A popular Washington illusion once held that the right combination of incentives and punishments might "peel off" Syria's President Bashar al-Assad from Iran's "Axis of Resistance," but nobody would have predicted that the weak link in Iran's alliance of radicals would turn out to be the Pales

, democracy and reform." Iran, Hamas knows, is not amused. But that appears to be a diminishing concern for the movement. Hamas' relationship with Assad, Tehran's key Arab ally, began to sour last year when the Palestinian group resisted pressure to stage pro-regime events in refugee camps in Syria.

e conflict about his Alawite minority versus the country's Sunni Muslim majority as a way of discrediting the opposition and holding his base. As Peter Harling and Sarah Birke, experts on the Middle East who have been in Syria, wrote in a recent essay: "Rather than reform, the regime's default setting has

e opposition in Syria began as a largely peaceful, grass- roots, pan-Syrian movement for democratic change. But it was deliberately met by President Bashar al-Assad with murder and sectarian venom. He wanted to make the conflict about his Alawite minority versus the country's Sunni Muslim majority as a way of d

m, democracy and reform." Iran, Hamas knows, is not amused. But that appears to be a diminishing concern for the movement. Hamas' relationship with Assad, Tehran's key Arab ally, began to sour last year when the Palestinian group resisted pressure to stage pro- regime events in refugee camps in Syria.

he conflict about his Alawite minority versus the country's Sunni Muslim majority as a way of discrediting the opposition and holding his base. As Peter Harling and Sarah Birke, experts on the Middle East who have been in Syria, wrote in a recent essay: "Rather than reform, the regime's default setting has