Epstein Secrets

tration acquiesced this week to yet another round of talks with the mullahs. This, 14 months after the last group-of-six negotiations collapsed in Istanbul because of blatant Iranian stalling and unseriousness. Nonetheless, the new negotiations will be both without precondition and preceded by yet more

March 3 saying that he had received "grisly reports" that Syrian government forces were arbitrarily executing, imprisoning and torturing people in Horns after retaking control of the Baba Amr district from insurgents. Did he really believe this; or was he just "saying it"? "One of the defining bifu

hat "our goal is ... a democratic transformation." Clinton has left the door open slightly for reformers within the Assad regime. Last Saturday in Istanbul, she urged "an opposition that can provide a pathway, hopefully in peaceful cooperation with the government, to a better future." The administratio

nority. The latest grim warning came on Sunday and Monday, when the United States estimates that 15 to 30 Syrians were killed in ethnic fighting in Horns. A White House official called those reports "really worrisome." The strategic stakes are high in Syria partly because Assad is allying himself ev

y, Nagorno-Karabakh, and more than 20,000 Turks, including Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin, staged a colorful protest rally at Taksim Square in Istanbul, Israeli defense officials said Israeli Aerospace Industries had secured a $1.6 billion contract to sell drones and anti-aircraft and missile defe

dia showed staged footage of arms being found in a mosque in Dara'a, the southern city where protests first broke out, and warned that a sit-in in Horns ... was an attempt to erect a mini-caliphate. This manipulation of Syrians meant the regime was confident that the threat of civil war would force

with the support of the Gulenists. Erdogan will get lower numbers, but beyond that it is hard to predict, particularly the all-important cities of Istanbul and Ankara, the bastions of his power. The wild card is the declining economy. Deepening political instability, high-reaching corruption, Erdogan's

rican intelligence official, said the Assad government was using Russian-supplied Mi-8 and Mi-17 helicopters to carry out the barrel-bomb attack in Horns. Russia, he said, is most likely providing spare parts such as engines, transmissions and rotors, which may explain Mr. Kerry's specific reference

he Syria-Iraq frontier. The silence of President Obama on the matter of Syria reveals the general retreat of American power in the Middle East. In Istanbul some days ago, a Turkish intellectual and political writer put the matter starkly to me: We don't think and talk much about America these days, he

ange of groups opposing Mr. Assad, the council has yet to seriously address melding itself with the increasingly independent internal alliances in Horns and other cities across Syria trapped in an uneven battle for survival, they said, warning that the council runs the risk of being supplanted. "Th