and for more now let's bring in abbas a journalist and a visiting scholar at the center for middle east strategic studies he is running us from tehran welcome to you and i'd like to begin first by asking you because israel says its measures are retaliate retaliatory following what it calls an iranian attack and that particular incident it has been described as a new escalation bring us up to date on what iran's position is. you know among you ran in a foreign policy foreign ministry spokesman most of us i mean that this issue. on this has been done not by run ins by syrian army in the syria and according to the reports it seems that the israelis initiated their reports but the attacks against syria within minutes the syrian army reacted by artillery strikes against jolan high and with. syrian army started to fire rockets again at golan heights and iran believes that this has been done by sunni an army and the foreign ministry spokesman said that those claims why is really officials are fabricated and based they slayings and the syrian army and government has its own those it's mits right to defend its so

earlier i also spoke to the director of the middle east prograat the center for strategic and international studies. this is the bloodiest day for palestinians in four years. the white house is blaming hamas, and the palyitinians are this is an israeli massacre. what is your assessment of the situation? >> you have an increasinnumber of hopeless palestinians. hamas has much less control over gaza, much less political legitimacy. fatah also has diminishing legitimacy. i think that part of this, notut all of it,art of it is just desperate young palestinians, many of them men, who say i don't see the point of living in a prison forever, i am going to go down fig in some ways it is easier to shape the violence if there is somebody leading it. if nobody is leading iis becomes very hard, as we saw in the intifada. firstlaura: the trump administration says that moving the embassy to jerusalem is just recognizing reality and that is the first step towards enhanng the chances for peace. what is your rction to that? jon: it is reality that a lot of the american government is in jerusalem. a significant part

assistant professor at the defense studies department at king's college and in brighton katherine shocked them middle east commentator and researcher at albion center for strategic studies a warm welcome to both of you undress triggs let me start with you what do you think are the real motive behind the u.a.e. beefing up its presence in the island of so called for. right there are a variety of different reasons i think we first of all have to kind of disconnect this current incident from what happened in the g.c.c. this is not part of the g.c.c. crisis per se although the iraqis of tried to frame it in that way i think this is part of an ongoing development that we've seen by the united arab emirates ongoing since of over the last decade really they've tried to expand their reach both militarily and commercially into the horn of africa which has become absolutely and has always been for a very long time commercially a very interesting and important part and the control of that area control of the bubble munda straight as well as both sides of the horn of africa in east africa as well as in yemen and along the red sea coast is absolutely detrimental and important