security council staff from 2011 to 2012-- he's now a senior fellow at the middle east institute; and hisham melhemshington 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. >> as we know, the uprising that began three and a half years ago unfortunately have morphed into civil wars in yemen, libya and sir. i can't syria is a place where there is a conversion of powers. the camps so to speak, the regime in damascus which is islam supported by iran which is the major region of shiite power as well as by hezbollah -- hezbollah's working for certain iranian interests 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 syria are more important in supporting the regime than mos cows. then you have sunnis from turkey, jordan, saudi arabia, qatar and others. attracting volunteers, quote, unquote, from the sunni world from africa, the caucuses, from central asia as well as from europe and