"Now that ISIS has supposedly taken over vast swathes of northern Iraq (in reality, ISIS is a small minority of the Sunni Arab forces that have risen against the Malki government), the newspapers are full of articles telling us that the West should align with Iran to defeat the common foe. Of course, Iran’s sectarian and aggressively expansionist policy in both Iraq and Syria is a major contributor to the rise of ISIS and similar groups. Working with Iran against ISIS is as intelligent as working with Hitler against anti-Semitism. I discussed the issue with Hayder al-Khoi and Jeremy Paxman on the BBC’s Newsnight." I don't think there should have been sanctions on Iran in the first place, but it does seem very upsetting that there is a rapprochement at this moment; when we have this problem with ISIS, which to a large extent has been caused indirectly by Iranian policy, both in Syria, where Iran has got militias on the ground, and it's supporting the régime which is slaughtering the people, and in Iraq itself, where it's encouraged the most sectarian instincts of the Maliki government. What we've seen in Iraq is not the success of ISIS, which is a weak group, it's the failure of the Iraqi state, and of course the collapse of the Syrian state. Iran, along with other countries too, but Iran is very complicit in that collapse in both countries. So I think it would be, maybe in the short term, beneficial, to deal with Iran. I can see why people want to, because Iran has an organised military, and it's an organised country, and they could go in , they could establish order if they wanted to in Iraq. In the medium and long term, it's a disaster, because Sunni Arab communities are going to be more enraged, and maybe the sectarian backlash will become bigger if they see Iran walking over Syrian and Iraqi sovereignty... it's important to stress something that people don't normally realise, that since January - it was a grey area in Syria which side ISIS was on - since January there is no excuse for that greyness, because all of the Syrian opposition groups, the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front, even Jabhat al-Nusra (the Victory Front, which is al-Qaida linked, it is an extremist jihadist group); all of these groups have been fighting against ISIS. So ISIS is a common enemy of everybody, it seems, but it's been helping Bashar al-Assad, really. he's been producing the chaos in which ISIS thrives. He's been following a scorched earth policy in Syria. Any part of the country he can't control, he's been devastating, from aerial bombardment, and other means, sieges and so on. That means there are massive refugee flows out of the country, it means there are no schools, no hospitals working, no economy going. Into this chaos, it is very easy for -and sometimes with the help of neighbouring states, we were talking about Turkey earlier - jihad tourists, psychopaths and nihilists to come in. They came into Mali, they were in Iraq before, the people drove them out, it's got so strained in Iraq they've now been able to come back in. These people come wherever there's a chaos. Bashar al-Assad has created a chaos in Syria by committing a near-genocide, and a massive ethnic cleansing. This revolution in Syria started, and for many people continues, as a revolution for democracy and freedom and freedom of expression. It wasn't sectarian for the whole of 2011, and then under the strain of Assad's war, it began to be... I think making a deal with Iran is the wrong idea. certainly, pressure the Saudis and other Gulf countries, make them pressure the private donors, who may very often be important people, to stop donating, they're not helping the Syrians. Even the Syrian Islamists don't want these ISIS people there. They are obviously not helping the Iraqis, they're confusing the issue, and making it more difficult for Sunni Arabs to get their rights. I'm happy to see Obama saying he's not going to take action until Maliki changes his approach on the Sunni Arab issue. I hope he's also leaning on the Iranians, ' OK, we need your military security help to face this monster that has just exploded', but the reason this monster has just exploded is because of the sectarianism of the - democratically elected - Iraqi government, and because of the genocide going on in Syria, which Iran is supporting, which is radicalising Sunni opinion around the world."
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