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Hello and welcome to The Spectator Podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast. So earlier this week, Trump met Putin.

But beneath the outcry against Trump's press conference,

a peace plan for Syria was slipped out. So is America withdrawing its troops and leaving Assad in place?

We also ask, should we push back the March 2019 deadline for Brexit negotiations? And finally,

we look at whether communism is still in vogue.

While the Twitter sphere obsesses over Trump's Helsinki press conference, a peace plan for Syria was designed,

one that would see President Assad stay in place after years of civil war.

Middle East expert John R. Bradley explains the complex regional relations in this week's cover piece.

Israel and the US both want Iran out of Syria, and Russia has agreed to help with that, provided it gets access to the warm

water ports in Syria it has always wanted. In return, Russia will sweeten the deal for Iran

with billions of investment into Iranian oil and gas, and America can then withdraw its troops.

With me to discuss this plan for Syria is Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria under the Obama administration,

and Owen Matthews, the spectator's man in Moscow. Owen in his piece, John Bradley says that

the Americans, the Russians and the Israelis have all agreed a solution to Syria.

And his name is Bashar al-Assad. Can you explain to us how this has come about?

Well, Putin has played a fantastic game with extremely small resources. I mean, we had to remember,

and Ambassador Ford remembers better than most, the enormous amount of blood

and treasure that was expended on trying to get a result in Iraq. Putin has achieved an amazing

diplomatic victory with just one squadron of aircraft, around 35 aircraft in the Himimimim

Air Base, a few handful of special forces, more than a handful of

mercenaries, of whom several hundred have died, but they've died deniably. And at the same time,

...