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JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): And joining us now to help us understand this new landscape of the Middle East is Steven Simon, a former senior director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs on the National Security Council staff from 2011 to 2012. He’s now a senior fellow at the Middle East institute. And Hisham Melhem, Washington bureau chief of Al-Arabiya news channel.
Welcome to both of you.
Hisham, it’s a given. The world has changed, right? Help us first by laying out the camps, so to speak, that we face.
HISHAM MELHEM, Al Arabiya News: As we know, the uprisings that began three-and-a-half years ago unfortunately have morphed into civil wars, Yemen, Libya and, worst of all, Syria.
Syria is the prototype place where it’s a proxy war for some regional powers. The camps, so to speak, are the regime in Damascus, which is Alawi core Islam. Alawi are an offshoot of Shia Islam, supported mainly by Iran, which is the major regional Shiite power, as well as by Hezbollah — Hezbollah is working for — essentially serving Iranian interests there — and also supported by militias from Iraq.
So you have the Shia coalition fighting to save the regime in Damascus. And in that sense, Iran and Hezbollah are more important for the survival of Bashar al-Assad’s regime than Moscow.
On the other hand, you have the majority Syrians, who — happens to be Sunnis in case — in state of revolt against the regime. They are supported by the Sunni powers in the region, from Turkey, to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others.
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