Epstein Secrets

egional primacy - even, perhaps, of hegemony - to be attained through fanning rising Sunni militancy [1] 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.

. Though Americans saw the embassy seizure as a strike against the United States, within Iranian political circles it was seen as a clever step by Khomeini and his fellow mullahs to get rid of the Iranian exiles who had taken over the Iranian government in the wake of the 1979 revolution. There is ano

used nuclear reactor fuel as part of a multibillion-dollar deal to purchase American nuclear power plants. After 1979, according to Mousavian, the Khomeini revolutionary government decided against many power plants and the enrichment facility. The Bushehr nuclear power plant, EFTA_R1_02203686 EFTA027

olding chaos in their midst, why should the United States, some 7000 miles from Iraq spill its blood and treasure in another futile quest to remake the Middle East for them? A futile quest that has over the last decade chewed up the minds and bodies of 56,000 brave American soldiers, including some 4,700 kille

that appears under the eye-catching headline, "The Man Who Broke the Middle East." The man in question is not Sykes or Picot or Nasser or Saddam or Khomeini or George W. Bush or Noun al-Maliki, but Barack Obama. I often agree with Elliott, but I could not let this one go by without a response. Don't wor

ce of interests between the two states. Unfortunately at that time, Afghanistan was becoming less important, for the Bush administration, than Iraq. Middle Eastern geopolitics was already more important to deal with than the Afghan issue, which seemed to have been dealt with successfully, at least from an Ameri

groups that would help project Iranian influence wherever it is in Tehran's interest? Besides, after the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988) and the death of Khomeini, Iran moved towards what has been called the 'second Republic'. From that time, the Iranians understood their political and military limits, and fo

and north Africa today have international implications. Iran's nuclear issue is but one of these, and certainly not the biggest; but in addressing the Middle East's other problems, much depends on the manner in which this one is resolved. In order to be successful, any dialogue must use the language of polit

broke out in 1999 was crushed without mercy. Recalling Khatami Khatami was either a man powerless to defend the movement or a faithful son of the Khomeini order who was given leeway by the regime's powers that be. He couldn't defy the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or run afoul of the Islamic

, say, $70 per barrel) is about 45 billion barrels, or 10% of the total North American oil in place. This would exceed the magnitude available from the Middle East. Over time, it would yield a shift in global oil-market power from the traditional producers (OPEC, Russia) to consumers (such as Germany, Eastern

onversely, views the world as essentially hostile, and many hardliners argue for a national security policy based on the most atavistic elements of Khomeini's worldview: international institutions and diplomacy are symptoms of an inequitable world, and a farce — self-reliance is the only option. And if

s have different results: Think of how an open computer system plopped into the Middle East might be used differently than one placed in the American Midwest. It was these sorts of vibrations, the ones made by power pulsing through certain forms or networks in history, that led the Orientalist scholar Kar

vision relentlessly, even into madness. If they are lucky, however, they live in an age where their crazy hopes catch onto some larger human hunger. Khomeini worried that the Shah would never fall. Lenin was preparing to abandon revolutionary politics in 1916. Jobs was told the iPhone could never be built

e Middle East. We created reality; others watched, baffled, paralyzed, afraid. In 1989, Americans gloated as the Soviet Union, our former rival for Middle Eastern supremacy, retreated ignominiously from the region. When Saddam Hussein tried to challenge us from within, we thrashed him in the Gulf War. Throug

egan to dawn on foreign observers and commentators. Some had their misgivings from the beginning, remembering Foucault's misguided enthusiasm about Khomeini and the Iranian revolution. But, they argued, Cairo was not Tehran—which is indeed undeniable. Articles began to appear arguing that revolutions ar

the revolution's father, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Like all Shiite clerics aspiring to become a "source of emulation" (marja'’-e taglid), Khomeini spent the first part of his career meticulously examining and dispensing religious guidance on personal behavior and ritual purity that ranged from t

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_026553 --- PAGE BREAK --- dung become impure and drinking their milk will be unlawful"). As a young boy growing up in the American Midwest, I remember being both horrified and bewildered after coming across these precise passages in a translated volume of Khomeini's sayings I found in o

and satellite television penetration, with their pervasive pornography, coupled with the region's youthful demographics, have accentuated the Muslim Middle East's fraught relationship with sexuality. Google Trends, which monitors searches from around the world, shows that of the seven countries that most frequ