 If Syria unravels the way now Turkey, Saudis, Qataris plus of course the Americans and Israel also are trying to do in Syria in the hope of weakening the Iran-Hezbollah-Syria axis, if Syria really unravels what do you think are the implications for the region at large? Well the first implication is going to be it's going to be in Iraq scale bloodbath, you know and by Iraq scale I mean 2003 to about 2007 it will be a bloodbath. And I think one of the reasons why Assad is still able to have some legitimacy among the population is sections of the middle class were the front row seat for the Iraq unraveling. They saw the refugees cross the border they heard about the kind of Shia Sunni violence the terrorist attacks against ordinary people so they are terrified that Syria will go the Iraq way and that is the section that passively you know you talk to people in that class and they will say we don't hold any truck for the Assad regime we don't like the crony capitalism we don't like the way you know one gangster gets the you know wireless contract one somebody we don't like all that but we don't want to go 2003-2007 Iraq that is terrifying for people it's terrifying not only for Christians not only for Alloites it's terrifying for middle class people after all middle class people the world over seeker kind of convenience the last thing they want to see is the complete social or you know kind of not just transformation but complete social mayhem. So that's certainly the first problem that will be there Lebanon is going to get sucked into any conflagration like that you know if that occurs it'll be it'll be appalling I mean if the Syrian people are not able to control their own dynamic to make a more just Syria you know people on the left need to have faith in the Syrian people in their struggle if you call for outside intervention you've lost the faith in the Syrian people if you call for stability through the Assad hammer you've lost faith in the Syrian people you know the role of the left a minimal role has to be holding faith with the Arabs in this rising holding faith with ordinary people and looking for a way for them to create societies to create governments absent the full presence of either imperialism or chaos you know that has to be the minimum formula that we uphold after that you know its details. If we look at what Kofi Annan is doing do you think he's really trying to achieve a kind of peaceful dialogue or do you think he's just playing the American game? I mean look if you put yourself in his shoes firstly if you put yourself in his shoes he's trying to seek to cement a huge legacy you know this is his make or break for his career and you know Secretary General Annan is nothing else if not a class one careerist so that's really what he's up to here I mean he picked the wrong issue to enter in as the great statesman if he succeeded it's the Nobel Prize if he fails it's ignominy you know I mean it's high stakes poker for Kofi Annan but the truth is that the Syrians are not naive here they are playing for time they have experienced this kind of thing before you know Bashar al-Assad's father himself slaughtered 30,000 people you know they know that if you raise a city and if you smile the next day you might be able to wait out any turbulence so they are using the UN in a way as well to buy for time the Americans NATO as well are extremely reticent you know every time somebody says NATO should intervene Anders Fogg Rasmussen in Brussels hastily calls a press conference and says Syria is not like Libya you know they don't want to intervene you know there's a lot of people in the West very cagey about what intervention is going to mean they are currently hiding behind the Russians and the Chinese saying the Russians and the Chinese they are the ones who are preventing any of us from acting they don't want to act this is just a very convenient position you know very cynical so the Annan plan is a plan amongst people who don't want to see any future for the people of Syria in a sense the people of Syria are being crushed their their being the blood is being let because the main powers nobody has any sense of what should be the way forward and the Saudis Qataris Americans by making again maximalist kind of positions for the opposition you know by allowing maximalist positions to come from there and you know that the Assad regime is in a position is kind of suicidal maximalism they know that if they don't say take the maximum position it's either they remain in power or they're all dead you know so they have a maximum position this sort of trumpeting up by the Qataris Saudis Americans even makes the opposition take some take a maximum position in that context what can the elder statement do there is no role for an Annan plan it's in a sense a fraud and it's just buying time coming back to the other state which is in display which is Iran do you think that the American Israeli game to contain Iran break its economies as chances of success they have done everything possible for the last two years you know economic strangulation sabotage of the country using these fantastic new devices of which I have no idea how they work Stuxnets and the other one is called Viper or some ghastly name okay they use those they've been assassinating scientists I mean using every mechanism diplomatic isolation sitting on India's head for instance saying India you break your historical link with Iran and India in a peculiar way says yes yes we'll comply but then there's a problem India has a structural problem anyway America has done everything it can to put pressure on Iran and the problem has been quite acute for Iran because its economy is not on a self-sufficient footing it relies on the rest of the world I mean in a sense it's a rent economy you know they don't produce everything they need they import very much for livelihood and plus Iran doesn't as you know process all of its oil so Iran sells oil and then buys it back so oil prices are up in Iran and you know this is really affected ordinary people in Iran but it's done nothing to the regime and with Iran we are back of course to the Iraq sanctions policy you know once again we're going to have hundreds of thousands of Iranians suffering greatly from a policy where there's no end game what is an America's end game in Iran you know they're using all these friends of theirs who have interests against Iran to gang up around Iran they're using every mechanism they have the Iranians then are also trying their best to reach out to regimes where they'll get support I mean you one of the scandalous things about the Arab League we won't have time to get into how that functions but when the Arab League met in Baghdad for their meeting this year most of the Gulf countries didn't send a representative senior representative why the Americans have been pushing the Iranians to the Iraqis to stop allowing Iranian planes to fly over Iraqi airspace into Syria the Iranians are planes are going we don't know what they're carrying nobody knows what they but they're flying over Iraq Iraqi government is refused to you know to stop those over flights Iran is reaching out to all these people because it's also in a position of desperation you know when I talk to Iranian intellectuals about maybe in 2011 middle to 2011 end they were confident they were talking about a new civilizational shift in the Middle East you know they were in a sense saying Iran in 79 was the beginning of the Arab spring and what's happening in Egypt you know it's just part of what we started in 79 it's a huge civilizational switch today they're not speaking in the same kind of confidence what they are saying is well we are now engaged and we have to reach out for friends wherever we can find them it's a terrible situation you know it's going to throttle the positive energies that were evoked in 2011 it's a dangerous game the Americans are playing with Iran last question do you think Americans have been able to beat back the Arab Spring the democratic upsets that took place and actually they are now on the offensive I mean I won't say they've beaten it back I mean the human spirit is a very very difficult thing to track and you know far be it for small intellectuals and academics to make pronouncements about you know the character of what Hegel called the Geist the spirit you know we don't know what it's going to take to actually engage that Arab Spring and I don't think that moment is here now but it is certainly the case that the Americans have been able to shift their sort of pillars around you know no more Mubarak not even the Egyptian military more emphasis on the Arab NATO on the Gulf countries more emphasis now perhaps on Turkey in a very interesting new accommodation with the Turks so they have sort of pivoted maybe much faster than we have observed the pivot you know thinking that it's only the bombing in Libya it's also a kind of new diplomatic landscape that they've created cleverly I think looking for people who are hesitant about the rising but initially couldn't speak out against it because they would have looked bad so that's one aspect of it I think the Libyan case is a special case as well it was an object lesson for the region you know that the American power is still ready and prepared to use itself the elections took place on on July 7th the result very clear the so-called liberals are going to come to power but if you look beneath the election results very interesting way in which the liberals came to power you know the lead character here is Mahmood Jibril Jibril was an old-time diasporic Libyan very close ally of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi who was the principal liberalizer of the Libyan economy in the 1990s I cover all this material in my book we talk about how Saif al-Islam wanted to make Libya a quate on the Mediterranean and he brought in Jibril he brought in you know the son of the last Prime Minister of Libya from Goldman Sachs to come and work you know redo the central bank they brought in these liberal diasporics all neoliberals to reshape the economy Jibril very quickly jumped to the rebellion right when it began he saw that things were going to go in that direction he became the head of the National Transitional Council it was clear that Jibril's base is not in Tripoli it's not in Kufa it's not in Benghazi his base is in Brussels his base is in Washington DC you know the rules for this election were very interesting 60% of the seats were going to go you know on this side of the country 40% here you know then very small splattering of seats in the south very interesting way in which that was decided so many percentage of the parliament was to be individuals non-party people you know so that means it it it kind of reduced the ability of the most powerfully organized entities to take advantage of the election in other words the Islamists so the Islamists were confined to fighting really in the elected party side of the parliament in the individual side you needed a lot of money you need a different kind of politics and Jibril is going to come with his huge coalition he's going to come to power sometime back people said you're crazy to say that these so-called American Libyans are going to be the benefactors of the Libyan experiment the fact is Libya is much more engaged you know in the way in which one might have imagined it the way the war turned out much more engaged militias are still roaming the streets there's still tens of thousands of people from pro Gaddafi people in prison Amnesty just had a report on terrible abuses of political prisoners so the situation in Libya you know in America Obama said this is a milestone the question is is it a milestone has he made a spelling mistake and it's actually a millstone you know is this a millstone around the neck of this of the Libyan people is this really the kind of vision that they had for the future what one can say in that is that this is a different way in which America insinuated itself has it fully succeeded no because if the short-term result of this Libyan election is that it'll open some space for new political voices to come out history is not over with the result of this election let's see what happens next year Libyan Libyan people are feisty they are not going to tolerate you know being the vassal state of America they didn't tolerate it in the 50s they are not going to tolerate it today so what you are saying is that the hopes yet of Arab Spring emerging and the democratic aspirations of the people taking root in the region that we shouldn't give up with what has happened in Libya or what's happening in Syria optimism of the will thank you very much pleasure