During a conversation with BBC Arabic’s Samir Farah on 15 October, the BBC’s former Middle East Bureau Chief Paul Danahar gave the audience at the fully-booked Frontline Club a first-hand regional snapshot of the post-Arab Spring Middle East.

He believed things might have turned out different if July’s coup that led to the removal of Morsi had been stopped.

“The easiest way of getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood would have been to not have a coup at all, to allow them to fail. Then people wouldn’t have voted for them again and they would have lost credibility.”

Farah then moved the conversation on to recently escalated events in Syria, where the international community is currently inspecting and destroying the country’s chemical weapons.

“When I went to Damascus in 2012, people still talked about the possibility of reconciling with each other. . . . It’s too brutal and too bloody today and has gone beyond the point of returning as an entity.”

Another question to @pdanahar tonight at the @frontlineclub: What has the West done for the Arab uprisings?

— Sam Farah (@SamirGFarah) October 15, 2013

A member of the audience asked about America’s reluctancy to get involved with boots on the ground.

“The US public thinks ‘We don’t want to fight on someone else’s territory anymore.’ Obama promised to get out of war, the Americans want to be left alone. People are worried about the economy and their pay-checks now.”

If you missed the event watch it back here:

Nearly three years after the start of the revolution in Tunisia, which was followed by uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa, many are beginning to examine what has changed in the region. Fighting still rages in Syria’s bloody civl war, Egypt has seen it’s democratically elected president removed by the military and sectarian divisions are rife.

One of those that has had a front row seat of this recent history is the BBC’s Middle East Bureau Chief, Paul Danahar. With a combination of access to the key players and extensive coverage on the ground his new book The New Middle East: The World After the Arab Spring, offers a fascinating and illuminating analysis of the new order. He will be joining us in conversation with BBC Arabic’s Samir Farah, to share his insight and analysis of events and what he feels the future holds for the region and its relationship with the West.

Paul Danahar was the BBC’s Middle East Bureau Chief from 2010–13, running the organisation’s news coverage of the Arab Spring. He was awarded an MBE in 2003 for his work as the Baghdad Bureau Chief during the American-led invasion. Prior to his present posting he was the BBC’s East Asia Bureau Chief for three years, and previous to that he was the BBC’s South Asia Bureau Chief. In 2013 he was appointed the BBC’s North America Bureau Chief, based in Washington.