Epstein Secrets

ts new vision of its national interest," he said, suggesting that this explained "the non-response by strikes to the use of chemical weapons by the Damascus regime, whatever the red lines set a year earlier." He went on to say this U.S. redirection seemed likely to be "durable," reflecting the "heavy t

p [Iran], to stop its ability to project influence in the region. And I think they've drawn the line in Syria," said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. "Sometimes they say, `if we don't do it in Syria, the next time it will be on our own territory.'" The threat of

pose an ideology that Hafez al-Assad didn't much care for, in exchange for military and intelligence assistance that Syria couldn't do without. But Damascus isn't just a resurrected strategic ally following years of desuetude under the Yeltsin government; it is Putin's last-stand client in the region ag

only on Iran, but also on Syria and the Palestinian question — seriously diminish American influence in the region. Bernard Haykel is Professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. Daniel Kurtzer, a former United States ambassador to Israel and Egypt, is a visiting professor of Middle East poli

urbances started in mid-March in Daraa, a southern city on the border with Jordan, when a dozen children were manhandled, arrested and carried off to Damascus for scribbling hostile graffiti on a wall. Distraught parents came down into the street to vent their anger at such heavy-handed brutality. They were

ry for management. Received wisdom gets eviscerated. “Jeff, you’ve got to do better than that,” she told Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, one day when he presented a shopworn idea. With USAID undergoing an overhaul, she listens to every reform report, down to the details of how