Epstein Secrets

war has spread. Turkey has become more and more belligerent toward Syria and even seems spoiling for a fight. Related fighting may have erupted in Lebanon — it's hard to tell the cause — but ultimately Assad will start trouble there. (That's Page 2 of the Syrian playbook.) Jordan is worried sick about

and the eventual establishment of an Islamic caliphate. Scholastic (traditional) Salafism: EFTA00700343 This is the ancient and inherent type of Salafism that focuses on the search for legitimate knowledge — such as interpretation, hadith (sayings of the Prophet), jurisprudence, etc. — more than focu

ely connected to Iran. But these rocket attacks cannot be separated from the ongoing silent war between Iran and Israel on several fronts in Syria, Lebanon and now in Palestine. The difference here is that Palestinian rockets that were primitive three years ago have now grown into a full arsenal that i

sar Allah, a Salafi group that had openly challenged Hamas' authority, and a number of its members. But short of using extreme violence to suppress Salafism in Gaza, which would have been too costly for Hamas, Hamas could not eliminate the Salafi challenge. It watched with worry as new Salafi groups em

and Salafist acculturation. At least seven Middle Eastern states are now beset by bitter, and increasingly violent, power struggles; states such as Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen are dismantling. Western states no longer trouble to conceal their aim of regime change in Syria, following Libya

rms the vanguard of this new "Cultural Revolution": It aims however not to contain, but simply to displace traditional Sunnism with the culture of Salafism. Unlike the Brotherhood, this element, whose influence is growing exponentially - thanks to a flood of Gulf dollars - has no political ambitions wi

rgely because Hamas's patron, Iran, has ordered that they lie fallow. So while Hezbollah and Hamas are managing to keep Israeli gas out of Gaza and Lebanon, at least for now, Israel is opting instead to pump to the West Bank. Noble already signed a 20-year contract to supply the Palestine Power Company

me then under the paracolonial aegis of Great Britain. The kingdom was organized in religious terms by a version of Sunni Islam called Wahabism (or Salafism). Wahabism is a very strict puritanical doctrine that was notably intolerant not only of religions other than Islam but of other versions of Islam

by Jordan's King Abdullah in 2004, during the Iraq war, to describe an arc of influence from Shiite-dominated Iran to its allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Today, these rival crescents risk turning countries in transition into battlefields over the region's future. The Salafis represent a painful long

nter threats from Iran. But there is something dreadfully wrong with tying America's future position in the region to the birthplace and bastion of Salafism and its warped vision of a new order. Robin Wright the author of "Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World," is a fellow at th