Epstein Secrets

United States "has Israel's back," and that he will order the U.S. military to destroy Iran's nuclear program if economic sanctions fail to compel Tehran to shelve its nuclear ambitions. In the most extensive interview he has given about the looming Iran crisis, Obama told me earlier this week that

ek by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to abandon its external headquarters in Damascus and support Syrians demonstrating for the removal of Bashar Assad's regime is noteworthy on several levels. All of them affirm the vulnerable and changing nature of strategic conditions across the Middle East. The

ssentially Shiite revolution have run into the complications of the Arab Spring. Emboldened by the fall of the pro-American Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Tehran has subsequently watched with disquiet the isolation of Syria's Bashar al-Assad and the potential loss of llamas, not to mention the rise of the Ta

s efforts to stop the violence and repression in its neighbor and onetime ally Syria. Although Turkish officials have harshly criticized President Bashar Assad's response to a yearlong uprising that is increasingly taking on the character of a civil war, they have not budged the Syrian leader. And they are a

would be an illusory victory. It can only end in defeat — and the strengthening of the insurgents' sworn Shiite enemies in Baghdad and, especially, Tehran. First, consider the brute demographic reality. Unlike in Syria, Sunnis are a relatively small part of the Iraqi population, about 25 percent — tho

l planning; high-quality training, etc.); - Prevented Iran from using Iraqi land and airspace to drag Iraq into the Syrian civil war on the side of Bashar Assad's regime, with all its consequences for internal Iraqi cohesion; EFTA00706973 - Assured key regional actors that Iraq's new government would not be