americans pay for the wars with them money others with lives if we were willing to go into harm's way and willing to risk being killed for a war surely we can risk some discomfort or an easy for. the rivalry between the u.s. and iran nice threatening to tear iraq apart can the war torn country manage to pressure from both sides to talk about this i'm joined by dr alley iraq's former minister of trade defense and finance. emerging from

a life or death struggle against isis iraq is managing to hold itself together while hoping that the new faces in the capital will steer it forward safe and sound but with iran and the united states using iraq as a competitive arena can baghdad stay out of the term around washington cold war forever does the new government risk being torn apart by the foreign players rivalry or is the profit to be made from trying to play both sides. dr. swarmer minister of trade stefansson finance welcome to the show it's really great to have you with us today dr levy the spokesman for the u.s. led coalition in iraq has said that american forces will remain in the country as long as there are needed there earlier the pentagon said that u.s. troops would withdraw when diaster is decide it do you think that will happen. yes i think so i mean there really is no need for them militarily on this resurgence of the isis. activity there seems to be some.

incidents taking place along the york city and frontin which seems to indicate that there is the possibility of dice regrouping in that area so unless and until that threat is removed i think the united states will find a reason to prolong its presence in iraq and also there are those small pockets of isis and care cocaine on bar province's and given iraqi army's considerable success in fighting the ash can they eliminate they remain in jihadists without america's help. i think so yes i mean as you said rightly that is not fragmented they're trying to regroup but i doubt if they will get to the same scale and scope of activities that they had before so they will be pockets of the insurgency activity some perhaps intense and i think all of that is or is within the capabilities of

the iraqi security forces the united states three provides primarily support and sometimes intelligence on the ground but that was in the early years of the the war against irish now i think both of these capabilities are well in hand by the iraqi security forces but why do you think it's taken so long to finally eliminate them from iraq i mean it's been a long time since dianne has been reduced to this couple of small pockets in the countryside well i mean the insurgency or the whatever you want to call it didn't come out of a vacuum there's a certain organic connection between it and the insurgency that opted after the american invasion occupation of two thousand and three when dawn meant during the period say between twenty ten and twenty fourteen but it was followed by the civil war in syria and then. a much more dangerous and formidable way in iraq the point i'm trying to make here is that on this the on the lying circumstances that

allowed for the emergence of this very very violence. i think that we may get the sons and even grandsons of diet at some point in the future it's primarily a political issue in iraq that has taken on military. fixations and in the final analysis once you contain the terrorists aspect of it and the insurgency aspect of it you have to tackle the problem politically so are you are you saying they're going to stay there for another fifteen years. no i'm not saying they're going to be there but they will there will be a form of violent resistance to the changes that have taken place in iraq since two thousand and three it will wax and wane and until you get a stable political order to start is to reach the bulk of the population subscribes to i think the underlying circumstances might not be. you know necessarily conducive to long term peace so you have to take really serious reconstruction

serious economic development serious integration of the destroyed areas into the national weave them back into the national fabric once this is done i think this is a multi-year multi a program. on likely to eliminate the. found the wellsprings of this violent resistance so another big thing is united states withdrawal from the iran nuclear deal and united states imposing sanctions against everyone wanting to continue trading with iran that the new prime minister said iraq will be ruled by its own interests before falling in line was u.s. policy is against tehran can baghdad really confront washington on this while it still depends on it militarily. i don't think it kind of to a point obviously but if it if it goes if it breaks flagrantly the american unilateral sanctions on iran it has to be prepared to pay the consequences and the

consequence is that the united states controls most of the international agencies on which iraq is one way or another dependent especially the financial agencies in washington and as much as they can influence the disposition of the resources the financial resources available to iraq in our excess to two international markets and obviously they can affect the extent to which the units to which the doctor government can. declare an independent course of action these are beyond this time time i think that i can government does have a very cogent argument that. interests with iran so intertwined at the economic and commercial level that it would be. in everyone's interests including that of united states not to see this is disrupted to the detriment of the arche economy so i have three points but if the trump administration insists on implementing the sanctions

to the finest points possible they have very powerful sources of leverage on the ark especially on the banking and financial side well because right now we are getting reports that iraq will stop trucking crude trauma care cooking oil filter iran and will export it to turkey to avoid u.s. sanctions but what do you think that means does it mean that baghdad is already dancing to washington student yes i mean this is probably a much more easy and much more visible way of acting out the american sanctions and the more difficult and complicated issue especially the supply of gas from iran into iraq which really fires a lot of the electricity. stations and until we find alternative source of gods there's no way that this office from says to see problems. unilaterally despond

this relationship there's also a very strong relationship at the level of tourism is religious tourism and there are because a very important market for any and goods some of these goods can be substituted for but not all of them so implementing the american sanctions to the utmost degrees going to have a very profound deteriorates effect on the ark economy there are a few governments will try to meet some of the more visible aspects of of the sanctions but otherwise there would have to rethink that and i don't think anyone's doubting the fact that iran iraq are very intertwined on many levels iraq's foreign ministry spokesman ahmed majuba said that baghdad may be asking washington to exclude the country from the entitled sanctions which may hit iraq because of its extensive cooperation with iran does baghdad believe this is possible i mean we have john bolton and don trump running the show in america yes i mean again you have to. second guess what's taking place in washington and what's really drives

american policy towards not only towards iran but towards entire middle east situation it is partly that. sort of unilateral nationalism together with a much more ideologically driven position taken by the new neo cons the post neo cons they may be able to affect the overall direction of policy and if that policy becomes in fact the way the united states is going to engage and interact with iraq is going to have very serious repercussions not only domestically but the region as a whole you know also a part for military assistance washington can really help bugged out put economic reforms in place and fight rampant corruption. what does tehran have to offer iraq that could beat what washington is offering well we must we must accept that iran played a very powerful part to organizing the resistance to the united states had not show

up on the scene until one or two months after the. fall of the fall of. iran jumped to the jumped into the into the fray and played a very important part in mobilizing the resistance and the the fight back after the collapse of the iraqi army so iran has. a stabilizing role to play when it comes to these larger issues and it's not easy for us to find an alternative to the to the kind of on the ground support that we have in the early days of the of the of the dice crisis when dice was nearly few miles from the center of baghdad and there's really nothing to stop it apart from the popular forces that came into being primarily as a result of the. society but organized on the grown but by.

the officers opinion pieces in american press are urging the u.s. government to get involved in supporting the new iraqi government saying that it will provide an antidote to they ran an influence in a country whose influence on iraq is stronger and more influential right now iranian or american well i mean loans influences searches quite deep inside especially in the center and south of the country and i think also these as it has increasingly strong effect on the. the political class is coming from the north from the west of the country so and also in kurdistan and so the range of a matter of iranian influence and connection is really quite quite wide and in some cases quite deep they also have a direct effect on the. disposition of the popular mobilization forces a. number of very senior people in the one with another connected with

iran so the range and extent of the range of influence is wider and deeper than that of the united states united states influence is primarily on the level of what i'll call the elites the political there's no sort of america party and inside iraq there are no large groups of populations that instinctively support the united states perhaps the codes the united states is reasonably popular but apart from that i don't think there's much reservoir of goodwill popular at the popular vote to have states there's also that there isn't the twenty first of all of goodwill either for you know for iran but the iranian influence is much wider across the cuts across. boundaries cuts across. cities across classes and so it is it is much more woven into the domestic fabric of. politics in the united states united states operates of the level of individuals

and the institutions of the government all right we're going to take a short break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to dr ali allawi iraq's foreign minister of trait defense and finance discussing the situation in a war torn country stay with us. when we all make this manufacture come sentenced into the public. when the ruling classes of project themselves. with the final

larry go round. no one posts that. we can all middle of the room signals. mean real humans through the world. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race off and spearing dramatic development only mostly i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk. a. new chick or founding.

a model but i think. when there's a real body. to. put them down i don't want that for a case that's funny as hell and nation under the name of community yeah in question whom he could feel that he had a chicken dad's going to say he made a move to follow the man that young enough to vote for out of the.

and we're back with dr allawi iraq's former minister of trade to finance and finance talking about the tension is and post isis iraq. now you were the stone opponent of saddam hussein in your life but you say that the two thousand and three u.s. invasion was illegal and resulted in dire consequences for iraq and the whole middle east are you saying that the removing of the dictator wasn't worth it. not really and this is a loaded question you have to look at look back in the circumstances of two thousand and two two thousand and three that that led to the invasion and occupation i'm on the record as being against using military force overthrow saddam the fact of the matter that it took place. and overthrew a dictatorship that's obviously

a positive but replacement which was chaos and anarchy and then on the east the whole. the whole episode one of the most violent episodes in modern middle eastern history is something that has to be connected and those responsible for launching the war have to take responsibility for it. to me and it is not really the equation doesn't really hold whether it's it was worthwhile or a lot of cause getting good over the tech to ship is an important event but destroying the political framework of the country and up ending the entire middle east and all that without having any sustainable and stable replacement for it and unwilling to take the consequences of these drastic actions is something else entirely if you want to make it if you want to make an equation out of it you would say yes there are certain certain freedoms and rights that were denied in the past that are now available but in exchange for that you have

a huge personal insecurity physical destruction dislocations and displacement of people and i think the invasion of iraq also on least the forces that ultimately led to the abortive out of spring and then the terrible war in syria so these consequences were not taken into account i told. the the weight of overthrowing. an established sovereign albeit a terrible dictations to a sovereign state was not taken into account the consequences of it will take into account and those who are responsible. embarking on this adventure including number of iraqis who participated willingly and it have to take responsibility for the post-war kills that the new prime minister abdullah do not he has written some time ago that the job of leading iraq is too complicated to burdened by a special interest by corruption and that he won't have enough political strength

to succeed fast word a few months and he's the prime minister do you think he was right when he was saying that he will fail i mean he idolizes correctly but you can. look at it as a kind of conditional manifesto for him to attend to attain the position of prime minister he set out the issues and the complexities and the negative aspects of it with the assumption that if these were removed then the circumstances would be acceptable for him to assume the post i can only assume that he feels no that this circumstance is that drove him to write this memo of a few months ago have been removed and that he has a fair shot to reforming the very dysfunctional political system that has misgoverned this country for so long but also their love didn't matter he is not an immensely popular politician at all you don't think that he would be

treated as a compromise like a puppet to be manipulated by real political forces in iraq by militias political parties etc. a concert he speak for that i mean he obviously is a very very adept and competent competent political figure he knows the distribution of forces and well what finally gave him political power it's really up to him to decide whether he's going to make a stunt and move towards genuine change and reform or he will he will not risk his hold on power by confronting the political factions that have played such a large part in destroying political integrity of the country it is really his choice i think i want to talk a bit about syria because you say that you can't solve the problems of syria without solving the problems of iraq what exact problem in iraq right now is

affecting the situation in syria. well i think the more iraq becomes a stable unified country focused on development focused on improving human welfare focused on the moving some of the. obstacles that have forced into it in the past the more it can it's going to be able to play a part in creating. the necessary foundations for a regional economy which would necessarily include some kind of partnership with countries like syria with countries like iran of countries like turkey creating a new dispensation a new economic political dispensation in which postwar syria can fit in it is impossible i believe to resolve the problems of each of these countries individually without looking at them in the regional context for example the terrible water crisis that we have in iraq i mean our rivers originate elsewhere the euphrates that originates in turkey and process through syria it's impossible to. a local or a purely

a rocky water policy which is really important i mean large number of the population works in our great culture without working out the issues with both turkey and syria so there is the issue for example of removing trade barriers of energy exchanges exchanges of the electricity grid and so on opening groups transport routes to the mediterranean all these require a very coordinated set of regional policies that buying these countries together in a framework that is different from what was in the past which was an extremely negative form of competitive one upmanship frequently leading to plotting against your neighbor and trying to change the system of government after the civil war in syria after hopefully you were able to stabilize iraq on a sustainable basis the next step must be to work toward some kind of regional regional confederation of not only at economic level but hopefully at the political

level to. foundations of duty so like you're saying more than two thirds of iraq's drinking water comes from outside so for instance whenever turkey needs to feel its reservoirs with water upstream iraq is failing it can water be used by iraq's neighbors to exert political pressure on it how can deal with this loner ability. well i mean of course they can because as i said earlier something like seventy percent of iraq's population works and we're now going through very very critical time of water shortages as turkey feels is down and also iran iran a lot of these tributaries of the of the tigris flow from iraq but iran really accounts for something like twenty percent of the water flow into the iraqi water system eighty percent comes turkey and syria so turkey is much more important partner in this in this aspect we have to we have to have some kind of regional

water water treaty you know water allocation system that allows for the various demands of these various countries without destroying the the cultural viability of the down down the river countries downstream countries in this case iraq these are i mean well established procedures and systems for creating bilateral and multilateral treaties riparian treaties that allow for the distribution of water and equitable way this has been ignored because of the crisis in iraq for the last forty years has not been a party to any of these agreements the turkey went ahead and built its huge dam system without really much much consideration of what was going to happen downstream same thing happened in syria with the building of a diamond the said lake and so on very little consideration was given to the effect on. iraq we can't allow these problems to be resolved the way that they have

been classically years old which is through confrontation and conflict and wars and so on we have to do it in a peaceful mutually supportive mutually constructive method whereby needs. and requirements and advocation is done with proper attention to the needs and requirements of each of these countries iraq has been the really the at the tail end of all of these. unilateral. water policies leaving us with an immense immense problem we have to meet in a few clothes and they know that street protests already erupted in basra before over water shortages and the harrowing examples of drought leading to dire consequences is just next door in syria how dangerous can this get. it's a community extremely dangerous i mean we're talking about the population of iraq of nearly forty million people there and as i said a lot of iraq is still in our good cultural society in spite of the fact that it

appears to be a kind of it's also a major or an exporter but most of the people who work in agriculture. if you get large scale displacement of populations ruhleben migration flooding into the cities and not enough jobs are available and the government being the employer of last resort you create this social conditions that you had in syria that played a very large part in creating the sense of dispossession and this and so the pressure that fed into the into the narrative of the terrorists and said the same thing can happen easily can happen in iraq if people abandon their farms. people can get water for the for their crops so for their animals they will leave they have no choice and when they come into the cities and up and slums demanding jobs from the government the government is fiscally stressed so what will happen you have you have thought of hundreds of thousands of people living in shanty towns prone to prone to all kinds of extreme ideologies and social extreme social

movements. all right thank you very much for this interview and it's been great talking to you were talking to dr ali allawi iraq's former minister of trade stefansson finance discussing the iraqi troubles and contacts abroad or. that's it for this edition of.

i got a place called camp sundown to get for people that can't. and they're like so tired . this is like a safe house i guess they don't have to talk about what they go through with us because we understand her daughter katie was diagnosed with a very rare sun sensitive condition if i get sunburned i heal she doesn't feel patients are going to have problems with the walk to talk to some of the brains that are actually shrinking inside the skull gets flicker in the brain still small . the pain is indescribable it's feels like a really really bad chemical burn but it goes through your skin in your muscle all the way down to the bone and there's no really cool we're just not sure this is but just.

when a loved one is murder it's natural to seek the death penalty for the murder i would prefer it be in the death penalty just because i think that's the fair thing the right thing research shows that for every nine executions one convict just found innocent the idea that we were executing innocent people is terrifying who's just no really the parent and that we even many victims' families want the death penalty to be abolished the reason we have to keep the death penalty here is because that's what murder victims' families what that's going to give them peace that's going to give them justice and we come in and say. not quite enough we've been through this this isn't the way. no i mean really when you say.

three days. a week then no not my no saturday. night live there was an agreement and stuff like. this i was top stories on our t.v. ukraine's president has called on his country's parliament to consider declaring martial law it's in response to russia detaining three ukrainian naval ships on sunday just off the coast of crimea. the deal we have agreed to day. for the u.k. u.k. prime minister to resign may gets the e.u. seal of approval for divorce as you know faces a tough challenge i.