Epstein Secrets

f of Egypt's General Intelligence Directorate, Salah Nasr, was convinced that the American Embassy in Cairo was behind the jokes going around about Nasser, by then the president. The directorate assigned dozens of offices throughout Egypt to collect the jokes and study their meaning. These were writte

it oil to markets in south and east Asia. Saudi trade and investment are increasingly directed toward Asian markets rather than Europe or America. Saudi Arabia's turn to the east began almost a decade ago. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz's first foreign trip after becoming king was to India and China in January

ourselves with the Soviet Union... We are ready to offer facilities to the Soviet fleet from Port Said to Salloum and from al-Arish to Gaza." With Nasser's death in September 1970, and the inauguration of Anwar Sadat as Egyptian President, the Soviet-Egyptian relationship quickly deteriorated. The KG

al relationship. Indeed, the relationship would almost certainly survive even if Israel, contrary to US EFTA00706377 advice, were to attack Iran. Saudi Arabia's relationship with the US is more superficial. The Kingdom relies on the US military for protection, without which it would be unable to resist an a

Politico Magazine that appears under the eye-catching headline, "The Man Who Broke the Middle East." The man in question is not Sykes or Picot or Nasser or Saddam or Khomeini or George W. Bush or Noun al-Maliki, but Barack Obama. I often agree with Elliott, but I could not let this one go by without

om the US until recently may have been predicated on another Iraq war — when the administration of George H.W. Bush demonstrating its commitment to Saudi Arabia's security in 1990 deployed 500,000 US troops to the kingdom to expel Saddam Hussein's forces from neighboring Kuwait. In the eyes of Saudis, that wa

fered Sisi $2 billion in arms - just what a country like Egypt, where half the women can't read, needs. The whole meeting struck me as so 1960s, so Nasser meets Khrushchev — two strongmen bucking each other up in the age of strong people and superempowered individuals. Rather than discuss arms sales,

United States. The second was the so-called Arab spring and what the Saudis regarded as its negative consequences throughout the Arab world. From Saudi Arabia's point of view, the relationship with the United States soured for a number of reasons. First, the Saudis felt that the announced "Asia/Pacific" reo

A. Cook is Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square. He blogs at From the Potomac to the Euphrates. Asharq Al-Awsat Gaza tunnel trade: Matter of life and death for Hamas Kifah Zabo

e the last U.S. soldiers depart in December 2011. With revolution sweeping across the Middle East, Washington abandoned President Mubarak of Egypt, Saudi Arabia's favorite non-royal leader in the region. Worried by the possibility of Iranian-sponsored insurrections among Shia in the Gulf states, the Saudis ar