Epstein Secrets

fortify his rule, then he's even more tightly bound to Iran than he was before because he has no other real interlocutors. He's been expelled from the Arab League, sanctioned by the international community, censured by every other international body. The rise of Islamist movements doesn't necessarily mean tha

icers in the Syrian army. The rise of Alawites in Syrian society throughout the 1960s was assisted by political infighting among the Sunnis and the Baath Party coup of 1963, which united working-class Alawites and Sunnis under one banner. Although Sunnis initially tolerated the growing clout of the Alawite

Assad is feeling lonely, though not yet lonely enough. First the Turks, Americans and Europeans de-friended him. Now formerly fraternal leaders at the Arab League want him deposed. The Syrian strongman's forces have killed more than 5,400 people in 10 months and turned a peaceful protest movement into a virtu

reasonable bargain: they could have safety and be left alone so long as they led apolitical lives. He once gave away the crux of his worldview to a Baath Party functionary. People have "primarily economic demands," Assad said—they aspire to a plot of land, a car, a house. Those demands could be satisfied "

Hafez committed cruelties of his own, but he always managed to remain within the Arab fold. Bashar is different -- reckless -- and has prompted even the Arab League, which has a history of overlooking the follies of its members, to suspend Damascus' membership. The fight still rages, Aleppo and Damascus have n

the Turks. Yet decades earlier, Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez -- a man of supreme cunning and political skill -- had ridden the military and the Baath Party to absolute power, creating a regime in which power rested with the country's Alawite minority. The marriage of despotism and sectarianism begat th