well him and next guest may know sam dagher as a journalist and author who has reported extensively from inside syria has worked for the wall street journal was nominated for the pulitzer price sam is also the author of assad or how we burned the country how one family's lost a 4 power destroyed syria published last year he joins us now from detroit welcome to the day 20 years on a country shattered how is assad still able to hold on to par. thank you very much and very quickly we just clarify a few points in your introduction i don't think it's a civil war the regime turned it into a civil war which is simply one aspect of the conflict that's number one number 2 the arab spring in the graffiti on the walls of the children are simply the triggers for you know the fundamental underlying causes of this uprising so to go to your question i think at the moment he is propped up by iran and russia without these 2 backers of the regime would fall he tends to play and play them off against each other whenever the russians lean on him he goes to the iranians for support and helped to push back th

tell us nothing sam dagher thank you very much for your time. a pleasure. iran now which is seeing fresh resto economic hardship police fired tear gas on demonstrators gathered in the southwestern city of baquba han on thursday according to witnesses several arrests were made videos from all the possible off the country posted on social media also showed heavy presence of security forces the demonstrations come as iranians take to social media to protest the planned executions of 3 young men were arrested during unrest last november. and for more on that i'm not joined by see if. we've seen that iranians have taken to the streets to protest against the government but they have also been protests online that's right so on tuesday the iranian supreme court upheld the death penalty for 3 men who were accused of vandalism and arson during similar protests that happened late last year and pretty soon after that verdict that decision came out people took to the internet to voice their opposition using the hash tag do not execute now this tweet got massive tractio