Epstein Secrets

e Iranian nuclear program does not make one a warmongering neoconservative, and actually extends even to Christians. Yesterday Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said, "The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us and that's a red line, obviously, for the Israeli

n a Cold War against a U.S.-led alliance that includes several Western and Arab states. Iran has worked on building this axis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and in addition to Syria includes two strong non-state actors: Hamas and Hizbullah. Syria has been the bridge for Iran in the Arab EFTA_R

as publicly stated that if Iran decided to do it, it could have the bomb within a year and the means to deliver it a year or two later. And perhaps Panetta is wrong — perhaps there is less time than he thinks. Or, as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak put it earlier this month, those who advise Israel

erent policy or intervention. This is something they've been opposed to, and it was not a Cold War phenomenon. Ironically, interventionism was for the Soviet Union something they did in their part of the world [East Berlin, 1953, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia, 1968] and they had no compunction at interventioni

that time, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director David Petraeus, Joint Chi=fs Chairman Martin Dempsey, and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. His las=-minute decision in August 2013 not to strike Syria after its use of chemi=al weapons was popular in the Pentagon and with the public, but

helped unleash change. For decades, th= Middle East was locked in place by the Cold War and petro politics. The U=S. supported countries opposed to the Soviet Union and rich in oil—Persian Gulf monarchies, Jordan and Egypt s=arting in the mid-1970s—while the Soviets supported their friends— Syri=, Iraq, Libya at

a commitment not to use force, the Obama administration looks to have determined two months ago to go public. The first salvo was Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's assertion that Israel might well strike Iran between April and June of this year. Nothing like letting the target know when to expect the attack.

diplomacy fail to stop Iran. This is perhaps even more delusional than dreaming about Iran benignly pursuing "atoms for peace." Deterrence against the Soviet Union worked precariously and unnervingly at times, with some very narrow escapes from catastrophe, only because of a confluence of calculations between

g India, U.S. President Barack Obama said, "India is not just a rising power; India has already risen." And just a few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called India a "linchpin" in the U.S. "pivot" to Asia, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the U.S.-India tie as a "critical bilater

w short years, even as Saddam had directly killed perhaps four times that many over the previous third of a century. Then there are the examples of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. When the Soviet state collapsed, it led to a rash of ethnic and regional wars across the Caucasus and Central Asia -- tens of thous