Epstein Secrets

nd they're opposed to that. The Russians have close relations with the Syrian government. Is that a major factor too? Absolutely. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was fairly clear about that when he talked about the role that Russia's played in protecting Syrian interests over the years. But the overriding f

s to put down the rebellion there against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is the remake of a really bad movie that starred Bashar's father, Hafez, exactly 30 years ago this month. I know. I saw the original. It was April 1982 and I had just arrived in Beirut as a reporter for The New York Ti

February in the Syrian town of Hama, led by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Word had it (there were no Internet or cellphones) that then-President Hafez al-Assad had quashed the rebellion by shelling whole Hama neighborhoods, then dynamiting buildings, some with residents still inside. That May, I got a visa

docked at the port of Alexandria—the first time a Russian warship has done so in twenty years —amid the announcement that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu would be traveling to Cairo that same week for talks with their Egyptian counterparts on "military-technical" c

ians do." The Syrian-Russian relationship was always rather complicated, full of mutual suspicion and attempts by Moscow to impose an ideology that Hafez al-Assad didn't much care for, in exchange for military and intelligence assistance that Syria couldn't do without. But Damascus isn't just a resurrected st

, and in Moscow Vladimir Putin won't abandon the son of the Soviet Union's favorite Arab tyrant, Hafez Assad. Far from it. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last week rejected any talk of new U.N. sanctions or arms embargo on Syria. He even defended Moscow's right to arm Mr. Assad as he kills more civil

ck 2. The Daily Beast Syria: The Lost Bequest of Hafez Assad Fouad Ajami January 23, 2012 -- Bashar, son of Hafez Assad, has a son by the name of Hafez. But as the defiance and bloodletting in £yria would seem to suggest, Bashar needn't worry about training his son for future rulership. The house t