Epstein Secrets

ing began more than a year ago, few predicted the regime of President Bashar al-Assad would ever teeter toward collapse. Now, though, the demise of Damascus's current leadership appears inevitable, and Syria's revolution will likely be an unpredictable, protracted, and grim affair. Some see similarities

An enormous unconventional arsenal. Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is thought to be massive. One of only eight nations that is not a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention -- an arms control agreement that outlaws the production, possession, and use of chemical weapons -- Syria has a chemical arsenal that includes sev

uch less fulfilled, notwithstanding administration pronouncements that the eleven-country "Geneva process" will effect a governmental transition in Damascus. The Atlantic Council's Fred Hof has posed asuestion that many Syrians are surely asking as well: has the US made Bashar al-Assad "an irreplaceabl

ing a large chemical-weapons arsenal that has been used repeatedly despite international prohibitions would restore the crucial deterrent effect of the Chemical Weapons Convention, undermined by the Syrian regime's lethal chemical munitions attacks on its own civilian neighborhoods. Above all, reliably halting Iran's nuclear

hoped. How do you like it? • In Syria, a populist revolt against a dictator threatens to become a civil war as Russia and Iran back their client in Damascus and the West defaults to a useless United Nations. The conflict threatens to spill into neighboring countries. • Iran continues its march toward a

ield." Beyond the intelligence services there is little hard and fast detail on Syria's chemical weapons programme. Unlike Libya, which had signed the Chemical Weapons Convention and was in the process of dismantling its stocks when Muammar Gaddafi's regime collapsed, Syria has not joined the convention and thus has never m