Epstein Secrets

ian differences. Even in the one corner of the Middle East where there is a regional body, the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC - comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), there are fresh challenges. Formed in 1981 as Britain withdrew from the Gulf, the GCC has

the self-proclaimed champion of Palestinian rights, is also taking notice of the camps' destabilization and division. Hezbollah's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah recently gave a speech on current events in the region, a speech that, at first blush, curiously focused on the primacy of resistance against Israe

ors to that point. But to the Saudis, not to mention Bahrain's ruling family, even the occasional appearance of posters of Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah amid crowds of Shiite protesters pumping their fists and chanting demands for regime change was too much. They saw how Iran's influence has grown in

for them," says Jasim Husain, a senior member of the Wefaq Shiite opposition party in Bahrain. Since March 14, the regional cold war has escalated. Kuwait expelled several Iranian diplomats after it discovered and dismantled, it says, an Iranian spy cell that was casing critical infrastructure and U.S.

by force in a member state. SPIEGEL: Still, the Arab League has been militarily active in the past. In 1961, for example, it sent a special force to Kuwait to protect it from an imminent Iraqi invasion. Don't you need this kind of a strike force, not unlike the UN peacekeeping force? Elaraby: Given the

nd then avoided defeat in a subsequent round of fighting in 2006. In a poll of Arab public opinion taken in 2008, the three most popular leaders were Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, in that order. But this sense of inexorable ascendancy in which the Iran-led bloc liked to cloak itself has