Three minutes after 10 is the time. A very good morning indeed to you. I hope you had a splendid,

a splendid weekend. I guess if you are Syrian, then you are celebrating. Well, almost certainly

you are celebrating. The thing about regimes is that there are people favoured by them, however oppressive a regime may be.

But I thought we'd begin by acknowledging that there are days when you think you know your way around the subject.

There are days when you think, do you know what, I'm pretty good on this.

I've done my homework or by some sort of process of intellectual osmosis. I've absorbed

enough knowledge, information over the years that I feel equipped for this conversation.

There are days when you find yourself in the polar opposite position. Most days you're somewhere

between the two. It might sound odd to you,

but I remember a kid at school whose dad was a diplomat, made a speech about Yugoslavia. His dad had

been based in Yugoslavia. And I only realized years later what a prescient speech that was. And it was

all about essentially how Tito held together a conglomerate of interests and territories

that really had no business being a country. The grip that a certain type of leader can

exercise over a country is simultaneously tight and loose. You know, you see the speed with which Bashar al-Assad's regime has been dispatched in Syria.

Well, that's the thing about these kinds of overthrows, isn't it?

They begin, they start slowly and then go quickly, like bankruptcy in the Great Gatsby.

Because it's been going on for years,

the rebellion, but there's this final push has, I think, the speed of which has taken everybody

by surprise. And you kind of find yourself freewheeling on the question of what will happen next. Nick mentioned a moment ago,

quite rightly, the shadows cast by previous experiences such as this, or at least experiences

that feel similar from this side of the world. So you would think, I think, first probably

of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein,

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