Epstein Secrets

fense minister. Moreover, Alfoneh pointed out that Soleimani's relationship EFTA_R1_00537950 EFTA02029069 with a mid-level cleric and student of Khamenei's in the late 1970s may have been the catalyst for his own proximity to the current supreme leader and his subsequent rise. But Soleimani's alread

sn't the lead, but he was absolutely critical and instrumental in our getting German unification accomplished, and we did it over the objections of the Soviet Union," Baker said. On China, Baker defended the George H.W. Bush administration's reaction to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which has been widel

en somewhat more temperate in his UNGA speech, particularly when it came to the use of the word "resolving." Netanyahu isn't a resolver; neither is Khamenei or Rouhani. But surprise, surprise, neither is Obama. He's a transactor if there ever was one, balancing between the desirable and the achievable,

all, the Ottoman Empire had ruled over Egypt. And, on the Turkish side, there was a sense of superiority vis-à-vis the Arab world. The collapse of the Soviet Union awakened "neo-Ottoman" Turkish ambitions in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and revolution in the Middle East seemed to offer the heirs (if not orph

grace reveals the Iranian president for what he really is: the dispensable sword of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The marriage 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 Ruh

y over ideology. Hard-liners, led by Khamenei, believed that compromising on revolutionary ideals could unravel the system, just as perestroika did the Soviet Union. Given the youthful Iranian public's desire for change, Khamenei seemed to have lost the war of ideas by the early 2000s. No one anticipated that

s many nuclear EFTA00684579 installations. The rise of pragmatists such as President Hassan Rouhani may have made Iran prone to a compromise, but Khamenei still lurks behind the moderates — and his basic injunctions have to be respected. The supreme leader and his hard-core disciples have withstood th

ill having made great strides toward nuclear capability. Such seemingly sober calculations miss the fact that the United States is not dealing with the Soviet Union but a beleaguered middling power that may still be coerced into more expansive concessions. In more than a decade of nuclear diplomacy, some analy

am Hussein. He then started wearing a mullah's outfit and transformed himself into a cleric. Currently, he heads an advisory committee attached to Khamenei's office. While Tehran is trying to annex Syria with money and arms shipments to the Assad regime, the plan for Iraq is domination through a relig

of Armageddon concentrated minds and helped prevent (or at least postpone) its occurrence. Credit for the Long Peace, therefore, belongs as much to the Soviet Union as to the United States—and perhaps to the nuclear scientists on both sides who so diligently built up their deadly arsenals. Kagan's corollary, t