Who Is Rami Makhlouf?

Update (May 10, 2011): Rami Makhlouf gives an interview to the New York Times in which he threatened that there will be no peace in Israel if the Syrian regime falls.

Antony Shadid for the New York Times:

Egypt had Ahmed Ezz, the steel magnate who favored tight Italian suits […]. In Tunisia, it was Leila Traboulsi, the hairdresser who became the president’s wife, then a symbol of the extravagance of the ruling family. Mr. [Rami] Makhlouf, 41, is Syria’s version, a man at the intersection of family privilege, clan loyalty, growing avarice and, perhaps most dangerously, the yawning disconnect between ruler and ruled

Good Sunday read..