“It’s a town hall style meeting – we quickly come to you,” BBC 4‘s Paddy O’Connell told a sold-out First Wednesday audience at the Frontline Club yesterday evening.  The topic was intervention in Syria, and with four experts by his side, O’Connell led a lively back-and-forth with the night’s attendees.

“Here we are talking about your country and bombing it, which we do regularly in the Middle East, don’t we?” he jibed to Lina Sinjab, who was born in Syria and worked as the BBC’s correspondent there until a few months ago.

L-R: Paddy O’Connell, Scott Lucas, Lina Sinjab, Shiraz Maher, Jonathan Steele. Photo: Jim Treadway

Sinjab, however, emphasised the necessity of stepping in.  With conservative estimates that 80,000 people have been killed and two million have fled the country, she opined:

“The reality on the ground is pushing Syrians – they have no other options. They know the Americans are coming for their own interest, but there is no other way to stop the bleeding of Syrians on a daily basis.”

Only one of the four experts argued against intervention:  Jonathan Steele, a columnist at The Guardian and longtime foreign correspondent.

“It would be a disaster,” Steele said.  “We don’t know what the repercussions would be… In Iraq and Afghanistan, we were told it’d be short and quick and surgical and all the rest of it, and they turn out not to be.”

But Syrians today are in a different position than Iraqis or Afghans a decade ago, Steele’s co-panelists felt.  Shiraz Maher is an expert on terrorism and Islamic groups in the Middle East, and to him, a critical factor is how much Syrians want an intervention:

“The Syrian people themselves have been calling for some form of intervention, for some form of outside help to come into Syria and tip the balance, and just to level that playing field…

” I’m not saying it would be clean [or] perfect. . . . Yes, if the West intervenes, we will inevitably kill, indirectly, and unintentionally, some civilians. But if we stand back, [Assad’s] regime continues to do the same thing – every single day.”

What should an intervention look like, then?

Sinjab, Maher, and Scott Lucas all withered at the idea of limited bombing.  Lucas, a professor at Birmingham University and expert on U.S. and U.K. involvement in the Middle East, explained:

“The question [shouldn’t] be on bombing. It should be on a longer term question of support for the insurgency. . . . It is a myth that Al Qaeda groups are dominating the insurgency. It’s a question of arms supplies: do you provide anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry to the insurgents which negates the weapons that Assad continues to have to basically maintain dominance? Do you support a no-fly zone or a protected zone that took place in Libya in 2011, which allowed people to be protected, and the opposition therefore could move against Qaddafi?”

The greatest danger to Syrians, Sinjab, Maher, and Lucas feared, was an intervention too weak or misguided.

“For Assad, for the Syrian Ba’athists,” Maher said, “this struggle is an existential one…  They [will] kill whatever number it takes [to survive].”

To protect Syrians, they saw a need for much more than just “a shot across the bow,” as U.S. President Obama has imagined.  In Sinjab’s words, Syrians

“are very fearful of:  if the Americans only did a ‘shot across the bow,’ and it was [only] a limited target, then the Assad forceswould retaliate big time on the people.”

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-syria-crossing

The election of cleric Hassan Rouhani to Iran’s presidency last week has Iranians and the world turning their heads to wonder: is the Islamic Republic changing direction? Will Rouhani’s promised pragmatism and reform replace the hardline conservatism of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

An expert panel convened at the Frontline Club  on 26 June, to probe for answers.

Saeed Barzin and Mark Fitzpatrick. Credit: Jim Treadway

CBS Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, chair for the discussion, observed:

“He’s [Rouhani] had a career which has kept him at the very core of power, very close to the Supreme Leader. So it’s hard to imagine that he will be a radical reformer. And yet, at certain stages in his career he has shown that he is a pragmatist, that he is capable of being flexible.”

During his campaign, Rouhani promised greater engagement with the West while urging the world to “acknowledge the rights” of Iran. His primary promise was to try to ease sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.

Meanwhile, as Arab Spring upheavals echo across the region, panelists saw the election as a sign that Tehran is tuning in acutely to the demands of the people. Author and journalist Azadeh Moaveni asserted:

“I see Iran changing, and I see the prospects for Iran changing from below. [It] feels differently inside the country. . .  This is a break from the police state atmosphere of the last 8 years, which has just been suffocating.”

Saeed Barzin, a longtime Iran analyst now with BBC Persian, agreed:

“What I learned from the elections is that Iranians are getting [ready] for change. That is quite clear in the way that the establishment behaved, the way that the candidates behaved, and the way that people behaved. . . . People are desperate for change. The economic situation is not good: inflation, unemployment, the value of the national currency. But, they want gradual change. They don’t want…a Libya scenario. They don’t want an Egyptian story. They want their new TV at the end of summer, and they want a new fridge for their children . . . gradual, calculated, reasonable, common sense change, and this is what indeed Mr Rouhani is representing.”

“One phrase which did not occur in this election, strikingly, was ‘Islamic Awakening’,” reflected Scott Lucas, a professor at the University of Birmingham and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView.

L-R: Elizabeth Palmer, Azadeh Moaveni, Scott Lucas. Credit: Jim Treadway

Barzin added: “The faction which was defeated in these elections was what I call the right wing of the establishment…which initially brought Ahmadinejad to power.”

With 72% of eligible voters casting ballots, Rouhani won just over 50% of the vote, while his nearest rival, conservative Tehran Mayor Mohammad Qalibaf, received only 16%, and hardliner favorite Saeed Jalili received 11%.

So, will Tehran’s tenor change in nuclear negotiations with the United States? Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, commented:

“The [current] nuclear negotiating team was criticizing Rouhani during the election, so they’re all out. But, that’s only a handful of people. My read is that Rouhani will probably bring in more pragmatists, as opposed to hardliners.”

Watch the event here or listen/download the podcast:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/iranafterahmedinejad