Everything that happens in Iraq affects countries outside.

There's a lot of expectation in the Middle East that post-Obama there will be a sort of tougher U.S. line on Assad, there will be more intervention and so forth. But I don't know if that's going to be fulfilled. If there is more intervention, then I think it's going to go the same way as these other interventions that we've seen in Iraq, we've seen, to a degree, in Syria, we've seen in Libya, you know, that they do really badly. They make bad situations worse.

Muqtada is radical in the sense that he wants the U.S. occupation to end and has always said so from the beginning. Secondly, his support among the Shia really runs along class lines; it's mainly the poor who support him. His organization runs an enormous social network.

It's always sort of amazing, sitting in Baghdad, to watch visiting dignitaries being received in the Green Zone by politicians who have usually very little support and seldom go outside the Green Zone.

A defeat for ISIS in Iraq will be defeat for ISIS in Syria.

Turkey is saying that it wants to preserve Sunni dominance in Mosul. Obviously, there, the Kurds, the Shia, the Iraqi government have their own agendas.

There are sort of Kurdish districts there in Mosul, or there used to be, but the Kurds mostly fled or were driven out. The same is true of the Christians.