Epstein Secrets

ia Thomas L. Friedman Article 3. The Washington Institute Avoiding Assad's Forced Solution to the Syria Crisis Andrew J. Tabler Article 4. Now Lebanon Does the US seek an Arab-Iranian "equilibrium?" Hussein Ibish Article 5. The Christian Science Monitor As Egypt squeezes Gaza, Hamas looks incre

Whatever the case, the attempt to include Iran in the talks should come as no surprise -- for months, UN Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi has privately and publicly lobbied Western and Arab countries to allow Iran into the Geneva process. While Secretary of State John Kerry has said t

ortance is being played out= On the one side there is a regional axis of allies going from Teheran throu=h Baghdad to Damascus and to Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the diplomatic pro=ection of Moscow and Beijing. On the other side there is a block of count=ies in full political and military confrontation

the table. On the table western powers= Russia, China, Iran and the UN are calling for a diplomatic and political=solution, spearheaded by UN envoy Brahimi. Under the table a vicious milit=ry escalation is being conducted by both sides with close intelligence co-=peration at the highest level through th

h impotence as Assad bulldozes whole neighborhoods, tortures with impunity and summarily executes the innocent as well as the guilty? Why, indeed? Lebanon totters. Jordan drowns in refugees. Iraq has descended into ethnic chaos and its border with Syria is a mere rest stop for Islamic radicals. A EFTA

. (Assad even seized the assets of the opposition's negotiators while they were in Geneva and declared some of those negotiators to be terrorists.) Brahimi thought, as few leaders do, of actual Syrians. "I am ev ry, ev ry sorry, and I apologize to the Syrian mule," he movingly said. Brahimi had done h

proved by over a hundred nations. This requires a naval blockade plus aerial and ground surveillance of possible smuggling routes through Iraq and Lebanon. The second objective would be to set up safe havens, and to protect them against Assad's air force and mechanized ground units. Three such safe ha

ncluding two missions led by Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi, two diplomats of the highest standing. Thanks to inside knowledge, we can report that Brahimi has offered the fairest and the most realistic compromise formula. More recently, Moaz Al-Khatib, the nominal head of the Syrian opposition, has go