Epstein Secrets

00706386 "Friends of Syria" coalition might bring to bear on the regime negligible and any proposed plans to hold a meaningful peace conference in Geneva, now scheduled for January 22, as laughable. Moreover, Russia earned congratulations for fashioning the very loophole through which the U.S. Comma

overnment decided to vent its anger with the Obama Administration's Syria policy by issuing statements in the Western press and by refusing to join the United Nations Security Council as a rotating member (after two years of lobbying vigorously for the post), Riyadh tried an alternative method of advancing its interests in the Le

y. It is time for the administration to breach its own walls of secrecy and fully and frankly brief congressmen and senators about what happened in Geneva. Going forward, the administration would be prudent to take into consideration congressional concerns as it plots its course of action. What's more

n of a two-track policy of steadily increasing economic pressure on Iran while seeking a diplomatic settlement of the nuclear issue. Rice marshaled the United Nations Security Council to repeatedly censure Iran and demand that it suspend all of its nuclear activities. The Treasury Department, meanwhile, pursued an imaginative pol

with Tehran, much of which was made possible by international sanctions pushed by the United States. And in January the US helped convene talks in Geneva aimed at resolving the £yrian civil war. This came only months after the threat of US military force against Damascus convinced the Assad regime to

own. They are consistent with American policy since 1967. If packaged as an American plan, they'd likely gain the support of the European Union and the United Nations Security Council. All Kerry has to do—not a small thing—is embrace them and call them his own, much as President Obama haltingly did in 2011, when he argued for "th

pose no serious threat to what Obama calls "core U.S. interests," and that they can be safely relegated to the nebulous realm of •. diplomacy and Geneva conferences, where Secretary of State John Kerry lives. Let's suppose for the moment that al-Qaeda's new base in eastern Syria, Hezbollah's deploym

e United States on certain issues. That came just days after Saudi Arabia stunned even some of its own diplomats when it refused a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council, citing its anger over the world's failure to respond to the crisis in Syria. This spat reflects the Arab world's deepening frustration with Americ