 Itamar, one of the things I've asked you to talk a little bit about is Syria because it hangs over the region in a very depressing way So you've written at least two books already on Syria and are now finishing a third. So I'm over to you, please Thank you With Syria at a different time So for several years actually the Syrian crisis was the focal point of Middle Eastern politics and not just the Middle East Waves of refugees rattled Europe in 2016 and affected elections in Europe and Brexit and the shockwaves reached all the way to the American elections of the end of 2016 and Not just a few days terrorists thousands of ISIS recruits who European citizens trained in Syria and Iraq and fought there and came back To Europe and some of them are actually in sleeping cells of terrorism And I hope that we will not hear again from them the way we did in Paris and Brussels, but they are there. So it's not a local crisis. It was a major International crisis a terrible humanitarian tragedy half a million killed many many wounded and maimed almost six million refugees out of Syria and almost half of the population displaced inside Syria now one of the Explanations for the complexity of this crisis was the fact that it was not one crisis, but three in one domestic regional and international the conflict between the regime and the opposition a Regional conflict between the camp supporting the regime and those supporting the opposition and international one now the domestic crisis the civil war itself Was resolved in December 19th 2016 when the regime with the Russian and Iranian help Captured Aleppo that was the end of the civil war. He said the opposition does not practically exist neither the political one nor the military one there are still thousands of Opposition fighters who are in the area of Italy, but they are not operating out of it now Winning the civil war did not mean normalization of Syria as a state the regime controls Maybe 60% of the national territory There is the area of Idlib that I mentioned there is an area actually conquered and Managed by Turkey and there is about at least 30 percent in the east and northeast that are dominated by the Kurds and the Syrian Democratic front. It will be a while before and Unitary Syrian state exists and exercises sovereignty over the national territory There is the question for reconstruction a very costly project Where will the money come from? Some of those who can offer the money the United States European countries will not offer the money without Return of the refugees, but the regime is not particularly interested in the refugees and Apparently the leadership is Quite happy with the situation that Syria now is a more homogeneous country less Sunni is more or proportionately More allies and and so forth. So the country is very far from normalization Furthermore the end of the domestic conflict meant an exacerbation of the regional and international conflict originally Iran And together with Russia actually dominate Syria, but child Assad remained in power But he is not fully an independent ruler. He is very much under the Iranian and Russian boots Turkey is a major actor interested largely the Kurdish question the preoccupation not to say obsession of Missa Edouan and Turkey is not to have an autonomous area in Syria certainly not to have a Kurdish continuity along the Turkish border and Connected possibly to Iraq. And this is the main motivating force in Turkish policy now Iran after making this massive investment in keeping Assad in power wants to benefit and It has wetted the appetite of the Iranians who want to use the presence in Syria in order to continue to build The original hegemony in an effort to build a second Lebanon Against Israel his Bala and more than a hundred thousand missiles and rockets in Lebanon They are now trying to build a military infrastructure in Syria. It's sort of an offensive defensive Attitude towards Israel. And of course if Iran is making that investment Israel is determined to prevent it now internationally the two major actors are Russia and the United States During most of the Syrian crisis the United States was absent Termination by President Obama not to be drawn played a secondary role and Russia came to play the major role under President Trump there is a Change and more recently a new team that was given charge of Implementing a policy the essence of which is to deny President Assad Money for reconstruction and to continue to exert pressure on him and through him on Only run in Russia, but Russia is now the dominant actor in Syria it has Not just a naval base, but also an air base and with a very small investment in fact has made actually Substantial gains in Syria. So Assad is left with these two patrons the Russians and the And the Iranians he is actually more comfortable with the Russians because the Russians have limited ambitions They don't want to manage they want them to penetrate the society or to expand Shiite influence They are just interested in the hegemony and the projection of power and influence to the rest of the Middle East and it's likely that Assad will try to play off the Russians against the Iranians So where does it does it leave us? It leaves us with the situation whereby The Syrian crisis as distinct from the Syrian civil war is far from being over the normalization of Syrian life and statehood and politics will take several more years and the region and the world will have to continue To live with a Syrian problem that needs to be better managed in the future than it was managed in the past Thank you. Thank you very much