Huge crowds have joined funeral processions in iraq, for irans top military commander and other officials killed by a us drone strike. Crowds chanted death to america as Qasem Soleimanis coffin travelled through iraqi cities on its way to iran. In the capital baghdad rockets landed near the us embassy. The premier of New South Wales warns that australia is in what she called, unchartered territory after the worst night of bushfires since they started two months ago. Temperatures have nudged 50 degrees celcius in some parts with winds spreading the fires and making their paths even more unpredictable. The death toll from the new year flooding in indonesia hasjumped to 60 with fears growing about the possibility of more torrential rain. Tens of thousands in jakarta are still unable to return to their waterlogged homes after some of the worst flooding in years hit the enormous capital region. Now on bbc news, dateline london with shaun ley. Hello and welcome to dateline london, the programme that brings together some of the uks leading columnists with foreign correspondents who file their stories for the folks back home with the dateline london. 2019 ended with two events that underline the folly of prediction; bush fires raging out of control across parts of australia forced the government to acknowledge some link between the claims of scientists and the humanitarian and environmental disaster unfolding around it just nine months after winning re election on a climate sceptic ticket. The other was the assassination by the United States of qasem soleimani, arguably the second most powerful man in iran. An act that re writes the rules of middle east conflict by proxy or the kneejerk response of a thin skinned leader with unwelcome consequences . Certainly it was a decision that had not been predicted. Undeterred, our Dateline Panel predicting 2020 abdel barri atwan, who writes on arab affairs, us journalist Stryker Mcguire from bloomberg, stefanie bolzen, from germanys die welt and polly toynbee, columnist for the uks the guardian. Welcome to all of you. Its been a week of tit for tat, which escalated dramatically in the early hours of friday morning. The previous friday, a us civilian working in iraq was killed in an attack, which washington believed was the work of an iranian backed militia. It struck back with airstrikes in iraq. The government in baghdad grumbled about a breach of sovereignty, protestors tried to storm the us embassy there, and ayatollah khameni appeared on television to waggle his finger at President Trump. Then on friday, with the explicit authority of the president , qasem soleimani, was killed. The United States, the president who wanted out of foreign engagements, preferring maximum pressure using economic sanctions to achieve either or regime change, is now sending thousands more troops to the middle east this in the year he seeks re election. Abdul, what is your prediction of what iran will do next . It could be a war. This is a declaration of war. After 2003 when president bush told usjob accomplished. Now the americans are back to their crime theatre. Donald trump now is sending 3,500 troops and we are waiting for the iranian retaliation. How it is going to be, are they going to actually bomb the American Military bases inside iraq . Or the military bases in the gulf . 0r theyre going to hit the israelis . We dont know yet. Their proxy for example, the military arms in yemen and lebanon and iraq, it is actually a huge mishap. The most important thing is what will happen after the retaliation, the iranian retaliation, are the americans going to bomb iran for example . There is much bigger things, i believe. The iranians could surprise us by saying that we are pulling out completely from the nuclear deal. Ok, if you are going to bomb us what we will go for is a nuclear deterrent. I spoke to a former 0bama aide who was involved in counterterrorism in the middle east who said, this to be fair was before the assassination, he said iran has kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing and at some point i had to be a response. There had to be a response. The us couldntjust keep 11 attacks on us bases in a matter of months. At some point something had to give. Something had to give, maybe. But what gave for something, i cant think of anything like this outside of actual war, where you assassinate somebody who is believed to be the second most powerful person in the country, outside of his country, in the capital of one of your allies. This is amazing. I think that iran, yes, it was pushing, pushing, pushing, but i cannot believe that iran ever would have targeted somebody of this level within the United States. I mean, it is such an escalation, that is why it is so dangerous. But why does the americans go back to it . This is the mafia way of thinking. You are the leader of the free world. This qasem soleimani, he was a United States partner fighting isis. He did very well here. But he didnt do that through any affection for the us did he . He did that because iran viewed isis as a threat. Sure but america lost more than 6 trillion in iraq and about 3000, 4000 americans were killed. 33,000 were injured. Iraq was under their control, full control. So why are they going to spoil everything and go back to square one, for what . This is the problem. I believe President Trump now is walking in a minefield in the middle east. The middle east, the most unpredictable area in the world. You can start a war, you can succeed assassinating somebody but what will happen after . This is the big question. The most astonishing thing is that the one possible positive of President Trumps arrival, his Election Campaign was he was going to be out of middle east, he was not interested in foreign adventures. He wasnt going to score his great successes abroad with astonishing acts of daring do. But has all gone now, he has now committed, as you say, an assassination that has never happened outside of a war zone under war rules. He is entirely unpredictable. Hes a man who never thinks of the next step. He gets an idea, is sitting on holiday and he just decides i know what, lets kill the guy. Well, they had the opportunity to do that. Bush could have done it, 0bama could have done it. Plenty of times they have known what he was and they could have knocked him out. Diplomacy by assassination has never been the way of western democracies or any democracy. Stefanie, the american argument is they had intelligence that he was about to coordinate or order a series of attacks that would have led to the deaths of american personnel. Never mind a threat to their own soldiers. Isnt that enough cause, from their perspective . Well, so far we have seen very little reaction by the western allies. They have been very reserved. I think there has been almost as much shock as to anybody else. What decision donald trump is taken. But at the same time, this exposes how weak the west, what we can use to call the west, is. The europeans dont know what to expect from trump. It is not really a channel of communication any more. They do still have the channel of communication with iran. Of course, that is why they are now between a rock and a hard place. But how they use that . What are they going to do . I thought your argument was very interesting, what happens if iran unilaterally pulls out of the nuclear deal which solves european dilemma. Because they want to keep the nuclear deal going against the wishes of trump. Of course this hasnt worked for quite some time, whered you go from here . And on top of facing the problem that there is a big gap now between the us european allies. The official european reaction, in itself, is very interesting because i mean it is tepid to cool. The british response was clearly not by any means sanctioning what happened. Broadly, this was a bad idea and we want to restrain on all sides. And then you have people like the former chief of defence staff, the former head of the secret services in this country, in the uk, condemning this and saying that this is incredibly reckless. I mean, i think it is just remarkable. Of course we havent heard from our Prime Minister yet who is extraordinarily on holiday in his own luxury island in the caribbean, which is the most unsuitable place to be. So it may be that when he comes back he starts to think, listen, im going to need a trade deal. It might be that the very cautious response hasjust been a holding position. I wouldnt trust johnson not to end up being forced to back trump a little bit more than he is doing at the moment. I believe, you know, trump if he is going to use it in order to divert attention from his personal problems and the investigation of his using. You mean impeachment . I think he has shot himself in the foot to be honest because this is a hornets nest in the middle east. It is really, really boiling because of this. Lets just pick up your point about a hornets nest and potential blowback, to use that rather crude phrase domestically. This is election year, donald trump won the election, although he didnt win the popular vote although he won because of the Electoral College vote. I have spoken to people who think he is more likely to be elected rather than not because of the Economy Holding up. You may dispute that. It cant be good, really it cant be good because his core supporters do not want this. They want him to stay on holiday, they want him to tweet all the crazy thing is that he tweets. They want him to build the wall that he is not building. They want him to improve their income tax situation, which he is not doing because his policies have in fact benefited the rich. But they wanted him doing that, they didnt want him involving the United States in another conflict. And that is where we are. I mean, its hard to imagine, there is no good outcome but even the least worst outcome is i think not in his favour. And to be sending all these more troops, 3500 troops, into the zone of most danger at the point where the americans in iraq are presumably going to be the first target of many targets. Who knows, irans reach is enormous. And what are the implications for iraq because the concerns about sovereignty that were raised. Iraq is a fragile country anyway. Where does it put iraq, this happening in iraq . I think this will dismantle it. This will create a fake state in iraq and this will be very dangerous to the International Community and also to the middle east itself. Tomorrow, the Iraqi Parliament will meet and they will abrogate all the treaties with the United States and they will ask for 6000 american troops to be kicked out of iraq officially. So it means all the american efforts in iraq, all the money that went into iraq completely disappeared. If the americans refuse this they have to go and occupy iraq again. And its an occupation. Yes, they will go back to an occupation again. As i said, the morning after is the most dangerous thing. We cannot predict what will happen but definitely the worst is coming. This is the danger here. So we have to remember, all this started because trump pulled out from the nuclear deal. If he didnt withdraw from the nuclear deal, we wouldnt go through all this trouble. And we have troubles in lebanon, yemen, iraq now. We have troubles in palestine or arab israeli. Where are we going . You have to remember that 18 Million Barrels of oil exported from that part of the world. So if there is insecurity the oil pricesjumped 3. And if there is a retaliation it will be 10. So who will pay the price for this in this Economic Situation hitting the world . Thats the dilemma the europeans are faced with because what if there is intelligence that proves there was a concrete attack, whatever trump now claims . But then again are they going to go down that route with the president who doesnt have a plan . So how can you follow someone who does erratic things . And you dont know where it is going to lead you. You made the point already that the eu and uk broadly find themselves on the same place on this issue at this moment at least. Even though polly said who knows what borisjohnson also will do when he returns from holiday. We are entering a really important year now. Brexit will happen on the 31st ofjanuary, i think even in brussels people will accept that. But what is next . That is a very big question. The timetable is clear, by the end of 2020 the transition period ends and by then you have to find a new relationship. Whether it is trade, security, police cooperation, data sharing, all that. It is impossible to settle these big issues within 11 months or even less because may be by mid march the negotiations will start. So by june actually. Theyre not even starting until the middle of march . No, no, because they dont even have a mandate. The commission is now working on a mandate that will be presented to the council may be at the end ofjanuary and then they have to decide on the mandate and then they will slowly start, by june actually Boris Johnson already has to apply for an extension of the transition period, which he has said he will not do. And if he doesnt . If he doesnt while there is another carp crash is another car crash possible at the end of 2020. We are back to square one anyway. He has the power and influence if he wants to extend that deadline. He also has the votes in the house of commons to do what he wants. He will be hoping that by leaving, leaving at the end of this month that is us, job done, drop brexit done, wear out, lets not talk about any more. Lets hope that all these negotiations go on behind closed doors if byjune it suddenly looks too difficult well if he says look, we out anyway but it is going to take is a bit longer to get that trade deal. Will that really be political dynamite . I think possibly not, he might get away with it. Im just wondering, stefanie, if there is mandate yet for. Agreed . The political declaration isjust a couple of pages that are just the ground on which you are going to negotiate on. Already in there are a lot of big hurdles. One of the biggest ones is the completely different vision what the relationship should be like. So the uk wants to be this thriving independent country with 2. 0 new market economy, not the social market economy which is the principle of the europeans. The french, the germans are many other countries are keen to keep the british close and not have a very low tax, low regulation country next door. It is a big country, the uk is a big economy and they will not allow the uk. He now has all these ex labour seats, working class seats, people will care very much about workers rights, about all of the social protections that the eu has given them. You know, they may have ignored those in voting for brexit but they were assured that they would keep those. And i think if he now tries to throw them away he is going to find his own party split between the wild mavericks who want london to be singapore on thames and those northern seats that he needs to hold. Isnt he instinctively pragmatist . Its hard to know. He is somebody who just wants power. But he is also erratic, a little bit like trump. You never quite know where hes going tojump next. It is hard to know. But in the end, you feel that been holding onto been popular, he hates it if he thinks people are not like it in. There you go, another example. We have had three or four already today, it is hard to predict, we dont know. The United States. The uk, the United States and europe, the old world perhaps. This is a big, ever evolving world, made smaller for sure by technology, migration and travel. This is an opportunity for the Dateline Panel to draw my attention and yours to some of the people, places and themes which didnt make headlines in 2019 but which may come to matter in the year ahead. Abdul, tell me about the place want to talk about . Libya. Again, ten years ago more than 1000 european and american journalists were in libya. Celebrating the collapse of the gaddafi regime. Wicked man of the middle east. The man who abused his own people, the dictator. After ten years now we are going again to the war in libya. 0ur arms are pouring into libya. Half of the libyan population actually ran away from the country because it is a failed state, it is unsafe. They went to tunisia, egypt. Now we have two governments and two parliaments and about 20 militia running libya there. So how can we actually get out of this mess in that part of the world . I can see there will be a war in libya. Now you have egypt, the united arab emirates, france, italy, cyprus, they are in one camp and on the other camp you have turkey, qatar. Turkey is just approving an intervention of its own. Yes. We could have again a proxy war. Now we have a proxy war in libya but we can have also a third war in libya. Libya is closest to europe, so if there is a war there can you imagine the immigration from libya to europe because it will be a very, very dirty war there. The turkish president has already said he will send troops, tanks, warplanes. And i will actually protect the government, which is organ recognised by the united nations. Is he allowed to do so . The russians on the other side, russian mercenaries are now fighting, sudanese, egyptian, whoever there. So it is a huge mess. I believe libya will be, you know, the headlines in most of the coming months of this year. May be into the next year. What will happen . The americans may be say we are against intervention but you started this mess. 0k. The british and the french did really. What is the thing you most want to draw attention to . Well, it was in the headlines but i think it is going to be even more powerful is the citizen. We have been seen in the last years protest. Whether it is india, romania, the whole of south america is but constantly protesting on the streets. We have it in britain on climate change. We have it in france constantly. So what is the power of the citizen . It is everywhere in the headline but then again what doesnt quite match, especially if you look at young people, they are now really motivated, theyre going out, they want to really say you have betrayed us but then again they dont vote. Why did they not go and understand that actually democracy only works if you use your right to go and vote. So what is the impact going to be