April 13, 2026 • 64 mins
Fronts + Fault Lines, is a new podcast on Palestine Deep Dive developed by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), an organisation of Palestinian and Arab youth in diaspora struggling for the liberation of our land and people.
Hosted by, Jeanine and Nihal, organisers with PYM in Britain - this new podcast series in collaboration with the Palestinian Youth Movement, offering sharp analysis on the Arab and Iranian region and what it means for us in Britain.
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In this episode, they are joined by Nathaniel George, lecturer in Politics and the Middle East at SOAS, University of London, whose work focuses on Lebanese politics, Hezbollah, and the regional dimensions of the Palestinian struggle. They’ll be discussing the escalating destruction in Lebanon — how the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel is unfolding in the context of a wider regional war, what it tells us about the limits and possibilities of armed resistance, and what the future of Lebanon looks like inside an order that is being remade by force.
This content is provided for educational and journalistic purposes only. References to proscribed organisations are made solely within the scope of analysis and reporting.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The connection between Israel and US empire is fundamental.
You have a open project of Raider Israel, which has existed
with designs from the beginning of the Zionist movement.
It's very clear from the beginning from Trump's
statements, the opening of aggression is that they wanted a
(00:20):
full scale regime change in Iran, fighting the 1979
revolution and the hostage crisis of the early 80s.
And when they attacked in the last Lebanon war again, they
always justify it with actions at the bombing of the US Marine
barracks in 1983 by the forces that would become Hezbollah.
(00:43):
They don't forget there are onlyceasefires for one side.
There's constant air strikes that are going on.
They killed over 400 people in Lebanon on a nearly daily basis.
And Israel is suffering costs aswell.
Like we're seeing reports that Kiryat Shmuna is no longer
occupied and completely vacated.There's the, the constant
(01:05):
bombing of Tel Aviv. We know that Israel on like
undermine underplays the numbersthat are coming out of injuries
and, and casualties. So it's also like how, how long
can can can Israel endure endurethis as well?
(01:26):
Welcome to Fronts and Fault Lines, a new podcast in
Palestine Deep Dive, developed by the Palestinian Youth
Movement, an organization of Palestinian and Arab youth in
diaspora struggling for the liberation of our land and
people. I'm Jeanine, an organizer with
the Pym and APHD candidate in Middle East Politics at the
University of Exeter. And I'm Nehal, an organizer with
(01:48):
the Pym and the writer and researcher.
And this series will go beyond headlines and sensationalism,
breaking down the facts on the ground in the Arab and Iranian
region. France and fault lines exists
because the moment we are livingthrough demands more than
breaking news can offer. The Arab and Iranian region is
undergoing an existential moment.
(02:09):
This show is our attempt to think seriously about what is
actually happening, why and whatit means not only for the future
of Palestine, but for the futureof the region as a whole in its
attempts to respond to imperialist and Zionist
aggression. In each episode, we'll be
tackling new developments on theground, going beyond the
headlines, breaking down the facts on the ground, and cutting
(02:30):
through the noise. And because none of this happens
in isolation, we'll also be asking what it means for us here
in Britain, a country whose government, arms industry and
foreign policy are entangled in these wars, whether it
acknowledges that or not. Today we're joined by Nate
George, Lecturer in Politics andthe Middle East at SOAS,
(02:51):
University of London, whose workfocuses on Lebanese politics,
Hezbollah, and the regional dimensions of the Palestinian
struggle. We'll be discussing the
escalating destruction in Lebanon, how the confrontation
between Hezbollah and Israel is unfolding in the context of a
wider regional war, what it tells us about the limits and
possibilities of armed resistance, and what the the
(03:12):
future of Lebanon looks like inside an order that is being
remade by. Force On February 28th, 2026,
the United States and Israel launched a surprise joint attack
on Iran dubbed Operation Epic Fury, targeting military
facilities, nuclear sites and leadership, killing Supreme
Leader Ali Khamenei in a decapitation strike that
(03:33):
shattered whatever remained of the previous rules of
engagement. Iran responded within hours,
naming its counter offensive Operation True Promise for the
quicker response relative to the12 Day War of June 2025,
suggesting a change in Iran's command structure and a shift
from Iran's strategic patience modus operandi following
(03:53):
Khamenei's death. But the opening hours of this
war will be remembered for something else.
On the morning of February 28th,the first day of the Iranian
Working and school week, AUS Tomahawk cruise missile struck
the Shahjara Taiba Girls Elementary School in Manab in
southern Iran's Hormuzgan province.
(04:14):
Over 175 people were killed, more than 100 of them school
children, making it the deadliest civilian strike of the
war to date. When asked about the strike,
this is what President Trump said.
Is the footage that shows that an American missile strike and a
Tomahawk missile likely destroyed that Iranian girls
(04:36):
school? So will the Americans, will the
US accept any responsibility? Well, I haven't seen it.
And I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the
most powerful weapons around, isused by, you know, is sold and
used by other countries. You know that and whether it's
Iran, who also has some Tomahawks, they wish they had
more. But whether it's Iran or
(04:58):
somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk, a Tomahawk is very
generic. It's sold to other countries,
but that's being investigated right now.
You just suggested that Iran somehow got his hands on a
Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first
day of the war. But you're the only person in
your government saying this. Even your Defense Secretary
wouldn't say that when he was asked, standing over your
(05:18):
shoulder on your plane on Saturday.
Why are you the only person saying this?
Because I just don't know enoughabout it.
I think it's something that I was told is under investigation.
But Tomahawks are are used by others.
As you know, numerous other nations have Tomahawks.
They buy them from us. But I will certainly, whatever
the report shows, I'm willing tolive with that report.
(05:41):
Yeah. Plus.
Iran's counter strikes targeted Israeli cities in Tel Aviv and
Haifa, as well as U.S. military bases across the Gulf, Al Haded
in Qatar, Ali asylum in Kuwait, a duffer in the UAE and the US
Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters inBahrain.
Tanker traffic through the stateof Hormuz dropped by
approximately 70%, with over 150ships anchoring outside the
(06:05):
Strait to avoid risk a stranglehold on roughly 20% of
the world's oil supply. And yet the picture that has
emerged from the Axis of resistance is more complicated
than either triumphalism or collapse.
Hezbollah re entered on March 2nd, conducting 9 attacks
against Israeli forces that day,targeting Merkava tanks in Kafar
Kila and launching anti tank guided missiles into Mutula in
(06:29):
northern Israel. Meanwhile, Iraqi militias claim
28 attacks on US and regional targets, with drones and
missiles demonstrating that the Axis has not been destroyed.
The US and Israel's stated aim is regime change and the
permanent elimination of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile
program, although when asked about this, President Trump gave
(06:52):
an incoherent response. Mr. President, you've said the
war is, quote, very complete, but your Defense Secretary says
this is just the beginning. So which is it?
And how long should Americans? Be well, I think you could say
it both the beginning. It's the beginning of building a
new country. The contradiction between those
two statements may be the most honest summary of where American
(07:13):
strategic confidence currently stands.
But for Lebanon, the wars reopening on March 2nd was less
a new beginning than the continuation of something that
had never really stopped. Since the November 2024
ceasefire, Israel had continued attacking Lebanon almost daily,
killing around 500 people, including at least 127
(07:35):
civilians. What scholar Amal Saad has
turned ceasefire warfare? When Hezbollah re entered the
war on March 2nd, it did so in acountry already on its knees,
nearly 1,000,000 people displaced, over 1000 killed, and
an economy that had barely drawnbreath since the 2019 financial
collapse, the port explosion andthe 2024 war.
(07:57):
The question now is what does this war mean for Lebanon, for
Hezbollah's capacity and future,for the Lebanese state's fragile
new government and for the country's place in whatever
regional order emerges? Welcome need to fronts and fault
lines. Oh, we're glad you're with us
today. Thank you so much for having me,
it's a honor. Since the November 2024
(08:18):
so-called ceasefire, UNIFL documented over 10,000 Israeli
violations of Lebanese airspace and nearly 1400 ground
incursions, while Israel also maintained occupation of five
positions inside Lebanese territory it was required to
vacate. Al Masad has described this as
ceasefire warfare, the weaponization of a nominal
(08:39):
ceasefire as cover for ongoing military operations.
Can you characterize what Israelwas actually doing during this
period and what what it was trying to achieve for the wider
war with Iran broke open everything.
That's a great question because first I put it in the bigger
context of what is Israel tryingto achieve?
What are their aims in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Palestine is to
(09:04):
have functionally demilitarized states that are responsive
primarily to Israeli interests and needs rather than their own
people, sort of these Arab facades, to go back to the
language of the mandate period that the British explicitly
used. So basically creating a regional
(09:24):
environment that looks a lot like the Palestinian Authority.
So they conclude these ceasefireagreements in Lebanon and Gaza,
and they're only cease fires forone side.
There's constant air strikes that are going on.
They killed over 400 people in Lebanon on a nearly daily basis
(09:45):
in between November 2024 and March 2026.
So over 15 months, there was nota single violation that on the
Lebanese side of the border thatactually that Israel or the
Lebanese government or UNIFIL had confirmed Hezbollah withdrew
(10:05):
to the to behind the Litani River.
And the Lebanese government, it's even they were even on TV
channels there were showing vacated positions and the halls
of, of weapons that were that were pulled out, which were also
destroyed, mandated by the US and Israel.
The Lebanese army wasn't allowedto, for instance, take those
(10:28):
weapons and add it to the arsenal.
So it's about destroying the capability.
So that's the political side of things.
Now on the social side, the ceasefire was also extremely
grim reality for the southerners, especially those
below on the front line villagesand and below the Litani Israel
(10:51):
during the September to November2024 war and then mostly after
it and that whole period in the ceasefire itself.
They entered villages, set them up with detonation, they charged
them with explosives, videotapedit, and then destroyed entire
villages, village centers and homes.
(11:14):
And so destroying the social environment, the, the, the
business environment, the cultural, religious environment.
You know, mosques that were over300 years old were destroyed in
some of these places like extremely valuable heritage
being lost here. Also, there was a campaign
against the livelihood of rural southern Lebanese people.
(11:38):
They destroyed farmland, they uprooted systematically olive
grows and olive trees, thousandsof olive trees.
They sprayed dangerous pesticides all of through
overflights and I just just justspraying the area with the with
highly dangerous pesticides thatdestroy the crops basically.
(12:00):
So they're creating a scorched earth basically in southern
Lebanon underneath the Litani for they also controlled the
villages. So that it's good that you
mentioned they they took over these five new points of
occupation, but they also enforced what I would call a
remote control occupation from the sky as well, even beyond
(12:22):
that in the villages. So they would obviously about
drone surveillance all the time,air strikes, killing families
regularly. At least 100 civilians were
killed in this period. But also they set, they
terrorized the, the population by setting curfews, for
instance, in villages, by infiltrating and, and, and
(12:48):
literally they would go into people's houses while they were
there and scare them away and make them run away, throw
grenades in their houses. So this is really a a climate of
terror, as I said, that they sewed in Lebanon and mostly
South of the Italian, but all the way they're doing
overflights over southern Beirutand the southern suburbs, Dahia,
(13:13):
the Bekar Valley, all the way N to Baalbek during airstrikes as
well. And in the meantime, the
Lebanese governments didn't haveany effect in stopping these
violations the and they did verylittle to help the displaced.
They didn't or to begin reconstruction.
(13:35):
For instance, what you've seen lately is that individual
activists or families or NGOs are starting GoFundMe campaigns
or, or something similar shows. And this is not this is quite
revealing of the Lebanese state itself and how it has operated
(13:56):
since its inception over just over 100 years ago.
And that this is like a institutionally laissez faire
capitalist economy, not something that it's not a
redistributive welfare state that's looking for the best
interests of people. And the the period was really a
chance that Hezbollah pulled back and said, you know, their
(14:20):
their logic is that in the Lebanese government can step in
with these kind of things to help them.
Of course, actually Hezbollah was paying rent for in many as
much as it could in many situations, providing services
it could in a, in a severely in a, in a degraded environment and
capacity from compared to what they were able to do in 2006.
(14:43):
But this is how I describe the ceasefire was a ceasefire on one
side of the border and not for the people of the South, whereas
the rest of the country was was carried on to a great extent as
much as they could. Yeah, thank you for that.
Because I think that there's almost like a misunderstanding
(15:06):
in a lot of mainstream narratives that, you know, the
Hezbollah entered the war, you know, on October 8th and then
there was a ceasefire and then reentered without actually
contextualizing this period between, you know, the ceasefire
and, and their reentry into the war.
At the same time, Hezbollah's March 2nd re engagement in the
war prompted immediate backlash.So the Lebanese government
(15:30):
formally banned Hezbollah's military activities and demanded
disarmament. In response to that, Hezbollah's
Secretary general Naim Al Qasim reframed the strikes as national
self-defense rather than, you know, solidarity with with Iran.
What do you make of that? Was Hezbollah's re entry gamble?
(15:52):
Was it necessary, given the existential nature of this war
and given what we previously were told of Hezbollah's
degraded state, what is a realistic assessment of its
capacity now in this current, inthis current confrontation, to
impose costs on on Israel? And it's a great question.
So in the situation that we're Ijust described as A1 sided
(16:15):
ceasefire and it is occupation going on physically and remotely
the the government prioritizing a single priority, which was the
to appease the foreign sponsors,the US and behind it Israel by
showing that their main priorityis to disarm the resistance
(16:35):
forces. So and they had sewn this
narrative quite effectively. That came really more from
Israel than anybody else. That Hezbollah had been
completely and utterly destroyed, basically degraded.
It will no longer pose a threat.Its entire leadership was
killed. I mean, this is known.
The pager attacks was an extremely wide thousands of
(16:59):
casualties. People have lost arms, my eyes,
limbs, all at once. These were shocks for sure.
The March 2nd rocket salvo whichwas surprised virtually
everybody, even the constituencyof Hezbollah itself, which had
made their lives somewhat stablein between in the ceasefire
(17:23):
period that was not a ceasefire was surprised and overwhelmed
and expressed a lot of uncertainty and rage even and
was forced to evacuate a short notice even from their villages
and towns and the Lebanese opposition of course and Israel,
the US and and and much of the world media for instance, they
(17:49):
describe that those rockets as what broke the ceasefire instead
of the 15,000 earlier. So the political priorities are
being revealed in those critiques that people are OK
with a huge of 10s of thousands of people living under
occupation de facto or actual and not having safety and
(18:14):
security or their homes or reconstruction.
So the original, so the first week was very controversial, for
instance. But the meaning of that again
has changed in in that the tempoof of the resistance operations
have been has been able to keep up.
Three weeks into the war, we still don't have Israeli
(18:35):
positions further than a few kilometers into Lebanon.
We've seen that Hezbollah has really appeared to have
corrected a lot of its its shortcomings and limitations and
outright errors and penetration that the 2023 to 24 war showed
with the intense knowledge of where the leadership was.
(18:58):
We don't have, we haven't seen any strikes successfully cutting
down known leadership members. And we would know that either
from Hezbollah or most importantly Israel.
So we see instead Israelis following a stat, a strategy of
relentless war crimes in Lebanonis the strategy.
(19:22):
And they openly say that. They say that we will make
Beirut look like Rafa or Khan you.
So they're admitting their own genocidal tactics and and that
is the strategy. Yeah, they tell people to
evacuate and then they bombed the bridges that are going from
the tiny river. Yeah, exactly.
(19:44):
And I think also Hezbollah's response was particularly
surprising given that it's re engagement was taking place in a
fundamentally altered regional geography compared to before.
You know, the fall of the Assad government means that Hezbollah
had lost its primary land corridor for weapons resupply
(20:07):
from Iran. This is a route that it depended
on for over a decade. Syrian territory was once a.
Area of strategic depth for Hezbollah and a training ground
and is now controlled by forces that are broadly hostile to the
axis of resistance. So given this, you know,
(20:28):
changing geopolitical landscape,how do you think this has
changed Hezbollah's operational calculus, calculus in in re
entering the war in in this mostrecent kind of wave of
confrontation? It's a very important question
and it's also connected to the question of the ceasefire that
(20:49):
was that was achieved. It's often not, it's often
forgotten or not remarked that the the offensive of Hayat
Tahrir, Sham of Ahmed Hashara, the offensive that led to the
downfall of the Assad governmentcommenced on the same day,
November 27th, 2024, as the Lebanon ceasefire went into
(21:11):
effect. This shows regional coordination
going on here. And the fall of the Assad regime
was definitely universally seen as a strategic blow to the axis
of resistance and contributed tothe image of a Hezbollah that
(21:31):
would be permanently weakened and an ineffective strategically
defeated is the words that many analysts continue to use in
Western think tanks. For instance, the loss of Syria
as a staging route, as a safe haven also for displaced people
is a major change in the war. In 2006, you had, you know, huge
(21:56):
amounts, probably a million. I don't know the numbers exactly
off the top of my head. Probably more than a million
Lebanese fled to the safety of of Syrian territory at that
time. That's no longer an option.
And now you have 1.3 million Lebanese internally forcibly
displaced in Lebanon, which has of course puts a lot of pressure
(22:19):
on the on the society and the state and inter communal and
political relations as well. But that point about the
regional environment being changed is also very important
as well, because when people analyze this war and often
thinking that it will lead to a similar disastrous outcome as
(22:43):
what has happened in previous Israeli invasions of the past in
197819821978 led to the the realbeginning of direct Israeli
occupation of Lebanon until 2082saw that ejection of the PLO
from Lebanon. In 2024, we saw, you know, the
(23:06):
killing of, of, of the top leadership of Hezbollah and a
new kind of occupation that we've been describing for him.
But the environment is completely different now.
And this is part of, yes, the gamble that was made by
Hezbollah. And it has to be seen for the
(23:26):
first time, this Lebanese resistance is not fighting for
existential survival on its own.In all of those previous
conflicts, there's been no othermajor party engaged in the
battle. And it has and has left Lebanon
exposed to extraordinary Israeliinvasion and, and, and
(23:47):
firepower. That's not the case anymore in
this because of the regime change war that's undergoing in
in Iran. And that's part of what has
changed. Maybe we can go into that a
little bit later. Yeah.
I mean, you've mentioned 1978 and 1982, and I think it's
(24:09):
really important to historicize this.
The constant is really infringement of Lebanese
sovereignty. You mentioned that Israeli
Defence Minister Katz explicitlythreatened that Lebanon will
look like Gaza unless the state acts against Hezbollah.
So you mentioned also Israel bombing central Beirut areas
long considered outside the conference geography, over
(24:32):
1,000,000 people are displaced. How do you situate this
particular moment within Israel's long history of
military intervention in Lebanon, 19781980 to 1996 two
1006? What is generally new here?
And what is Israel repeating, including its own historical
failures? And also what is the importance
(24:53):
of the Litani River as a buffer zone?
And is this related to Israel's Greater Israel project?
There was an Israeli official who said two months ago or three
months ago, we, oh, we don't care about the Sykes Picot
borders, which I found really interesting.
So how, how do you explain this moment and in in comparison to
(25:18):
previous moments, Israeli infringement on new?
So this is a moment of extreme danger for Lebanon and the
region for sure. Israel in its previous
invasions, 1978, that the declared objective was to push
back the resistance and that time it was Lebanese and
(25:39):
Palestinian. The national Lebanese National
Movement parties, left wing, secular and Arab, yes, Arab
nationalist parties were leadingthe military resistance in the
Lebanese side. There was nothing called
Hezbollah or an Islamist Islamicresistance in Lebanon in 1978.
(26:00):
And their goal then was to push the resistance behind the Litani
River. It's it they didn't and they
failed in that in 1978, but theystarted an occupation that a
direct occupation that lasted until 2000 and they found
themselves having to go back in in 1982 because the resistance
(26:23):
strengthened in in Lebanon, especially southern Lebanon
below the Litani. And it showed that was in
control. There was actually before 1982
invasion. There was a year long ceasefire
that had been brokered between the PLO and Israel by the United
States that the Israel was just itching to get rid of and broke
(26:47):
in order to invade with 90,000 or so troops.
And it used the opportunity thatEgypt had just signed the calm
David Accord, so it was out of the equation, so to test this
new Treaty of normalization as well.
That's a very important point. That was already the case in
1978. I we could we could add that
(27:08):
those negotiations were going on.
Sadat had already agreed to be more or less had agreed to stop
fighting Israel in this in this in 1975, a Sinai 2 agreement,
which is also a big episode in the Lebanese civil war that
contributed to the outbreak at that time.
This this regional quarantine ofresistance forces.
(27:31):
And we saw that Israel was able to go in in 78.
It that worked for a time. The US actually told him to to
withdraw, exerted pressure on Israel to withdraw mostly.
So you saw that in US pressure again, key to stopping Israel
when it when push comes to shoveagain in 1982, US pressure put
(27:55):
the red light on Israel eventually when it when it gave
him a green light to go in and then they told him to stop by
August basically. Ronald Reagan called a kin to a
Holocaust. He does very strong words.
Then the story goes some 20 minutes later or so, minutes
(28:16):
later, Israeli bombs are stopping in Beirut.
So there's the connection between Israel and US empire is
fundamental. And we see that there are
contradictions there too, which we can already we can we can
see, I think are going to end upbecoming to play an important
(28:38):
role in the current period. But to get back to the question
of how is this war compare with those the previous episodes you
have now the Israeli you have those really this is an
(28:59):
extremely far right government in Israel, the right to the
right. And you have a open project of
creating new borders greater theproject of greater Israel, which
has existed with designs from the beginning of the Zionist
movement. And and they submitted borders,
proposed borders to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that go
(29:23):
up to the Litani River and in Lebanon, because they want this
water resources is a water scarce area.
And the litany could add a significant source of water for
especially now a, a hard in Israel that's hard pressed for
such scarce resources. So you have that open rhetoric
(29:47):
of annexation going on, which has never occurred in the past.
They always had had set their aims as destroying the
resistance completely in 2006 and 1982.
And what this always does is produce more resistance,
basically more and better and more focused resistances over
(30:09):
time. As what as what come out of
this? Yeah, you see the Israeli
soldiers as well in Lebanon withthe Greater Israel badges on
their uniform, you know. It's no secret anymore.
As we saw recently, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to
Israel, green lighted the idea that Israel should take over the
(30:32):
land of its land from the Nile to the Euphrates as the as
biblical lands allegedly as a biblical testament allegedly
gives up. He just he's interpreted in a
very specific way. But you have AAUS administration
and A and a Zionist regime that is intent on expanding based and
(30:59):
it's it's a highly dangerous moment.
Yeah. And you and you spoke about some
of these contradictions that exist at an international level
or or at even a regional level. And a lot of these in some ways
are kind of mirrored at a domestic level or an internal
level in Lebanon. I often think that you can't
understand our region without understanding Lebanon because it
(31:21):
is in many ways, like a representation of a lot of
contradictions that exist at a broader level in, in kind of
one, in one place. And Lebanon now has a government
under Nawaf Salaam that has beentaking genuinely unprecedented
steps. You know, first of all, formally
banning Hezbollah's military activities.
(31:43):
He's also ordered the deportation of IRGC personnel
and also calls for disarmament. And yet the army commander
reportedly refused to confront Hezbollah the March 2nd cabinet
session. So, you know, these
contradictions aren't new, but they are kind of manifesting in
a, a, a, a particular way in this moment.
(32:06):
How deep do you think these contradictions go?
And what happens to these contradictions and to Lebanese
political space, including kind of the fragile conversation
around normalization that we seepoliticians kind of like
skirting around after this war, if and when this war ends?
(32:29):
That's a very, again, excellent question.
So I think you're absolutely right to de exceptionalize the
struggles of Lebanese politics and show that the trends that
exist in Lebanon's more open political system and environment
are not shake. It's not a sectarian curiosity
(32:51):
only. It's not there's resistance and
there's pro resistance and pro colonial forces in every Arab
country and it's real social constituencies for them.
So that in Egypt and, and for instance, comes to mind, but the
Lebanese fronts of the war for Palestine has always been
(33:14):
notable for the amount of local mobilized on the ground,
opposition to to resistance forces.
And that's what the Lebanese civil war was about.
And between this 1975 and 90 andeven the 1958 war is that
ultimately the battle lines are about Philo colonial or pro
(33:36):
colonial forces versus anti colonial.
Yeah, and it's it's it's important that you say that
because I think there's a misconception that it was a
sectarian war when actually it was on these lines of, you know,
colonialism or Philo colonialismand anti colonialism.
Definitely. And then and those.
But you know the politics of identity.
Yeah, of course. Like anywhere in the world, from
(33:57):
the US to the UK to Lebanon are also stratified by people's
identity and how the narratives of of, of, of identity and
politics and political loyalty and authority are created are
mobilized by people with agendaspolitically.
(34:19):
And you have that that is stratified along sectarian lines
to a a great extent in Lebanon because you can look at the, you
know, it's not everybody's living in the same area into an
equal amount or something that all this different sects.
(34:40):
You have the closest community to Palestine geographically, and
that's dominate as the demographic majority
overwhelmingly in the South of the Shia population.
You have Christians, you have Druze there too, you have some
Sunnis, but it's overwhelmingly the people closest to Palestine
have been the Shia community andthey experienced occupation
(35:02):
1948, the loss of territory fromtheir villages even that remain
on the border, They lost money territories.
There's seven villages that wereethnically cleansed, completely
destroyed the Appa, most, most of which were Shia, some of them
also Christian as well. And you had a Lebanese
(35:24):
government's institutional setupwhich politically prioritized
and gave the Christian community, the Maronite
Christian community in particular, not just any
Christians, but Maronite Christians decisive power before
the civil war and, and, and mandated Christian majority in
the parliament on a six to five ratio based on this 1932
(35:48):
colonial. Census and you can even see that
on how Palestinians were treatedin Lebanon as well, like the
Palestinian Christians, a lot ofthem were nationalized or given
citizenship and that's quite different to how the Muslim
population was treated as well, so.
Absolutely. And you see, even earlier than,
even before there was Palestinian refugees in the
(36:10):
Mandate period, you had Armenianrefugees being given
citizenship, the boost Christiannumbers and Kurdish refugees
being denied and citizenship or nomadic populations.
So in between Lebanon and Syria being denied citizenship and
nationality. I think this is important that
(36:31):
there is an institutionalized Christian supremacy in the
Lebanese political system. That certainly has changed since
the civil war slightly, I mean to, to changed, but from 1975
you had up leading up to the 1975 war, you had a huge
(36:51):
imbalance of power based on sectarian calculations and in
Lebanon and you had a Maronite Christian elites that didn't
want to, that saw only somethingto lose by getting involved in
Palestine now without reason, because we can see how
(37:12):
devastating it has been. Now it's, it's it.
You could, you could easily argue that aligning with Israel
in and fighting side by side with it and carrying out
extensive massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese
(37:34):
Muslims by those Lebanese Christian nationalist parties
that are represented in the government today, that that
actually that's not being neutral.
That's actually taking aside andincreasing the problem,
increasing the social distrust. So we're seeing a big replay of
(37:54):
many of the dynamics that led tothe emergence of a serious
resistance in opposition in Lebanon.
Opposition to the Lebanese political system itself is what
mobilized 10s of thousands of people in the in the 1960s and
70s. I think what's the parallels to
(38:15):
Camp David are really interesting.
And like, you know, when you talk about the Lebanese factions
that think is the war with with Israel that's halting Lebanese
economic progress. Some factions in Egypt thought
the same, like led by Sadat and the ruling classes.
And that, you know, if Egypt were to sign the Camp David
(38:35):
Accords and the normalization agreement and move from the
Soviet camp to the US camp, thenit would become almost like the
Japan of the Middle East or the Singapore of the Middle East.
And yes, well, you know, there were no more wars with Israel.
But you know, you see, today theimpoverishment actually worsens.
(38:55):
Like there was no prosperity. The promise of prosperity and
promise of, you know, economic Wellness just never arrived.
That's such an important point because this is kind of what
seems to drive the trend of normalization in Lebanon and the
wider Arab world, is that the idea is if we stop fighting is
(39:21):
if we stop fighting for palace, for our rights and for
Palestinian rights. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a
jaw. It's a impossible task.
And we'll only have everything to gain by surrendering.
And we can see with Egypt's and and other cases that that's not
the case. There's not going to be some
showering of prosperity that comes out of nowhere, money
(39:44):
falling from the sky basically that's going to go and be evenly
distributed around the society to build schools, roads,
etcetera. Healthcare, for instance,
provide a Social Security safetynet.
This is not what's on the table with normalization with Israel.
What's on the table is. Hardening of authoritarian
(40:10):
control that seeks to protect Israeli interests.
And we can also go back into Lebanese history to see the kind
of peace that they're trying to impose.
Lebanon did sign a de facto peace agreement with Israel in
May 1983 after the 1982 invasion.
(40:31):
It's called the May 17th Agreement.
It stipulated very many things for Israel to have the right to
attack Lebanon anytime it wantedto was anytime it deemed a
threat. Even more insidiously, it
demanded the in cessation of allhostile propaganda against
(40:53):
Israel and the Zionist movement.What does that mean?
That means the end of free speech of a free expression in
Lebanon, which is supposedly something that the partisans of
the Lebanese regime care about deeply, but they they would
willing. But what they want is to
(41:14):
actually muzzle all political discussion and and to simply
link up with the US and Gulf project and now looks very shaky
6. Yeah, and you can see the end
result of that in Egypt today with people, you know, even
people posting stickers, Palestine stickers on walls or
(41:37):
unfurling banners are still in prison today since the beginning
of the genocide. Jordan similar things going
arresting activists as well. So this is what's in and
obviously the Gulf countries arein no way representative
institute have no political representation for active or
(42:00):
free speech or free organization.
There's no political freedom in in those in those locations
here. So if we zoom back out again,
the stated US rationale for Operation Epic Fury was Iran's
nuclear program and ballistic missile capacity, even though
(42:22):
that kept changing with every official statement.
But Israel simultaneously killedKhamenei, struck cultural
heritage sites, and is now engaged in full scale war in
Lebanon. What is the actual strategic
vision here? Is there one queer plan shared
between the US or Israel? Or are there divergent agendas
(42:42):
operating under the same military campaign?
And how I know we talked about this before, but how seriously
should we take this Greater Israel project as an operative
ideology and what would a successful access of resistance
response look like now that the war, it seems it's not going
according to plan for, for the US and you know, we see this
(43:04):
competing ideas of of of the remaking of the region.
What would that look like? That's the that's the big
questions, right? Simple question.
There is good asking you to predict.
So, yeah, I'll try as a historian, we like to resist
predictions because obviously what happens is can be so many
(43:26):
things that can happen. To take the question of what is
the US and Israel want. It's very clear from the
beginning from Trump's statements the opening of of the
of the aggression is that they wanted a full scale regime
change in Iran, fighting the 1979 revolution and the hostage
(43:50):
crisis of the early 80s. And when they attacked in the
last Lebanon war again, they always justify it with actions
at the bombing of the US Marine barracks in 1983 by the forces
that would become Hezbollah. They don't forget empire has a
long memory. Donald Trump himself is at his
(44:11):
administration are guys that watch these events.
They are motivated by revenge for these humiliations they've
eventually faced that they fade the United States face.
And this is kind of like and forthem reading it as a as as these
(44:32):
revenge for the for these moments where US empire, the
limits were exposed and these defeats were imposed after the
barracks bombing in the US in Lebanon, the US which had a
peacekeeping quote, UN quote, peacekeeping contingent,
military contingent in the country withdrew and and they
(44:55):
remember that. So what they are seeking is a a
return to US hegemony in Iran, which was the case before Shah
was there. Now I think that it was more
along the case of what they werewanting was for a repeat of the
Venezuela scenario where they have where they killed the head
(45:19):
of state, they overwhelmed as a shock and awe attack and they
make a deal with some elements of the regime that are that
they're able to live with and that they're able to dictate the
terms. So eventually now they grossly
miscalculated that in Iran. Now Israel for its part is
(45:42):
serious about the greater Israelproject.
It's is less about regime changeand is seeking less regime
change rather than more of a state and society collapse in
Iran when like a. Syrianization of Iran or
Vulcanization of Iran? Exactly as they an ethnic
(46:04):
Balkanization, they they from the first days of the war were
inciting Kurdish rebellion against the state.
For instance, they attempt to instrumentalize Kurdish groups
in Iraq against the state not panning out.
There's of course Arab and Baloch minorities as well that
they're targeting with with propaganda.
(46:26):
And this is also a historic strategy of Israel and the
United States to weaponize identity and minority
populations in states all aroundthe world.
This is what they did. And and this is a huge part of
the Lebanese civil war was finding at least making alliance
(46:47):
with these Philo colonial elements that are willing to set
themselves out against the rest of society.
Castle J in the Vietnam War, forinstance, as well and and
elsewhere now. So the Israelis would be happy
with a state that's just not functional, a total state of
(47:09):
chaos, shattering of Israeli society.
The US and the Arab and Turkish allies of the US would not like
such a scenario because it wouldcause extraordinarily refugee
crisis, chaos on their borders, the disruption of regular
capital accumulation. I mean, Netanyahu said Turkey's
(47:31):
next after Iran despite it beingAUS ally.
Exactly. Seeing any country with a big
military, you know, despite its leadership being favourable to
the US or not as a threat, as future threat.
So that shows that it's not willing to stop even if it
succeeds in Iran, which doesn't look like it is currently.
(47:54):
It doesn't look like it is no, but so, but the Israelis have
all the incentive in the world to continue this for as long as
they can. Whereas the US is now feeling
the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and the, and the power
that Iran has demonstrated in and the leverage that it has
(48:15):
shown in attacking, it's in to agreat extent, destroying US
bases all over the Gulf, stopping liquid natural gas
production in Qatar, which aloneis worth 20% of the whole world
supply. They're seeing there's this is
the biggest energy crisis in world history already.
(48:37):
And we're only in the beginning.Basically this, the fallout
effects of this can happen for could, could ripple out and last
for years. And the US is not as insulated
as Israel is from that MAGA. Donald Trump's, you know, the
(48:57):
Donald Trump's base was not his America firsters, allegedly.
They're not interested in a major ground war.
You can't change the regime via the air.
It never has worked in history. You need ground forces, whether
they're local or or regional or foreign, you know that could,
(49:20):
you know, you need ground forcesto take over and set up a new
government Basically that's not going to happen from the air.
But you're seeing the leverage is really in the Iranian side
right now by no one can open thestraight there. the US has set
deadlines for Iran to capitulate.
(49:41):
That has now passed twice and UShas done nothing about it.
Are they going to, are they planning something?
Most definitely. They're most definitely.
They're not just going to let this slide.
They don't. That's not how they do it, and
especially not the Trump administration, who is.
And Pete Hagseth, the US 10 finished minister of war that
(50:05):
the secretary of war as he renamed the Defense Department
his whole he made a career out of saying we should throw out
rules and regulations and warfare.
Basically. This is has a long history too
of if he's refighting the Vietnam War.
The right wing critique of of the US and Vietnam was that how
(50:29):
could we lose to these ragtag Vietnamese peasants?
We should have. We were fighting with one hand
tied behind our back because thepolitical leadership wouldn't
let us use our full arsenal. Hey, Seth comes out of this
tradition saying we're going to use our foolish and we're not
going to clutch our pearls. And Israel for a long time has
(50:51):
been the idol or the the, the best case scenario in, in, in
those militarist writers in the United States, they say, look,
here is a country that is, that doesn't fight according to the
rules and that gets the job doneand, and, and, and succeeds.
(51:12):
So you have here this merging ofa ultra militaristic American
right wing and Israeli right wing in power to have brought
upon this aggression that for decades Pentagon planners had
been saying no, this is not absolutely such a project would
not be worth it. Which is an argument against the
(51:33):
realist position that, you know,Israel's What?
The US support for Israel is completely irrational at this
point. No, it shows that they're in
tandem. There is, you know, it's
difficult to assess the, the, the US, Israeli relationship is
interesting. There's those that say the US is
(51:54):
in full control. They're doing this because, you
know, simply for US region reasons.
And then there's the Israeli lobby arguments, as in what
Israel is, what the US is doing is on behalf of Israel and it's
not in the American interests. And I don't really find either
(52:14):
side of this to have come be conclusively convincing and
making the argument about the entire nature of the
relationship, no. I was just going to say I find a
lot of those arguments kind of like divorced from like any
analysis of imperialism, which Ithink is worse.
Maybe the analytic deficit maybecomes from but.
Yeah, I mean the it's not mutually exclusive either way.
(52:37):
There's sometimes and I think this is a case where we've seen
that the Israeli government and it's and the Zionists law.
They made a huge effort convincethe United States to do this
whereas other imperial administrator and they were able
to find receptive audience in the Trump administration to go
(52:59):
on this adventure. It's you could say it's in the
imperial interest. Yes, to destroy the axis of
recent certainly is in the Imperial interest to do, though
it's not always in the Imperial interest to Just because you can
do it doesn't mean you should, is how another group of
Imperialists would say. And that we're actually
incinerating our own influence with this war, which there seems
(53:22):
to be a great deal of evidence pointing towards that being the
case. Yeah.
You mentioned that Iran has someleverage now.
So if we look at it from the Iranian side, Iranian strategic
doctrine has long including whatanalysts call horizontal
escalation, the idea that ratherthan matching an adversary blow
for blow vertically, Iran activates pressure across
(53:45):
multiple arena simultaneously. And you mentioned that, you
know, the US, you know, is not abiding by war rules anymore.
But it seems that Iran has also,you know, moved beyond its
strategic patience doctrine. So do you think Iran is is still
capable of restoring the turns through this model?
(54:08):
Or are we watching the doctrine survive and name while its
infrastructure has collapsed? Like what do you think the
future for Iran and and this newescalation that we're seeing and
maybe also the. Region you know people are
talking about. The region is going to be
forever changed, for better or worse.
Yet how the Gulf, you know, the,the, the new bombing of, of the
(54:33):
Gulf like this is unprecedented.What the, what that means for,
you know, Gulf leadership like what, what, what does the future
hold? Yeah, without again asking you
to predict the search. Complex questions about if we
look closely and read what's happening closely, we can
already see the outlines of future possibilities.
(54:59):
You see with the attacks on the Gulf, I mean, it's clear that
the US and Israel did not or theGulf didn't adequately prepare
for the Iranian response to to close down the straight.
They've even said they did. They didn't expect them to close
down the straight, which is odd considering Iran has telegraphed
(55:19):
exactly that as their maximum strategy.
They did that again. They've caused huge losses to
the Gulf regimes and American bases.
Those bases, which were built upover decades of time in the Cold
War era, starting all the way tothe present, will not be easy to
(55:40):
rebuild. We don't know.
We, it's, it's difficult to say they won't be rebuilt.
The Gulf, the GCC countries haveall the money in the world,
basically. But what they don't have forever
is American political will. Can I imagine the American
population after this war is going to be excited about a new
(56:02):
billions and trillions of dollars of commitment I will be
required to rebuild these these Gulf monarchies?
No, I actually don't think that there's going to be a lot of
appetite in the American public for that at all.
There's. While maintaining its hundreds
of bases around the world as well.
And and and Asia, yeah. Correct.
(56:24):
So then the question is, what isthe Gulf going to do?
What are the Gulf countries going to do about it?
They have lots of money. Will they invite?
Will they create? Will they?
Will they pay for their will? They say America will pay for it
and you come or put up a patchwork of private security
contractors to create basis. They don't have populations that
(56:48):
can be converted into an army. Their military, their military
and strategic posture is going to be re evaluated after this.
They've also seen how the UnitedStates has prioritized Israeli
interests. And I think Netanyahu's speech
the other week or I can't remember what it was, was quite
(57:10):
revealing. He says when he said, well, we
don't need these Gulf, we don't need the Strait of Hormuz
anymore. Basically what we want to see is
the GCC countries putting pipelines to Israel.
They go on the Israeli, they endup in the Israeli coast and they
go to Europe there. That fits very well within a
greater Israel project. And he would be happy he doesn't
(57:33):
the the Israelis would be happy to see these Gulf regimes become
more subordinate to it. So that that is also pushing
Israel to go further and creating potential areas of
friction between the Gulf regimes and Israel and the
United States. We also and who has the upper
hand right now? It's hard to say that Iran
(57:57):
doesn't because we know that allof its death has not been
activated yet. The Houthis in Yemen or the
Ansar al Law the could easily shut down Babel Mandeb Straits
which is a enormous chokehold chokehold for the global
(58:19):
economy. The withdrawal of the US
completely from Iraq, which we just saw happen.
NATO troops in the US and Austin, the other other NATO
missions there just withdrew completely from Iraq due to,
yeah, the fighting and intensitydue to this war there.
(58:43):
And so there's huge cards that Iran has yet to play already.
Now the US, you have Gallant, Gallant, they wanted
international war criminal, indicted war criminal published
an article this week detailing why he thinks now is the time
that the US must act to seize Hague Island from Iran where
(59:07):
Iran exports 90% of its oil. So Israel is, is ordering the
United States or kindly requesting that the US troops be
sent to occupy an island in the middle of the the Gulf.
They'll be sitting ducks for Iranian missiles and targets at
(59:28):
at the very best. So Israel is looking to push
this as far as it can go. Now all that economic the the so
far the economic choke point of Strait of Hormuz has already
caused interest rates to increase and projections to
increase in the US and the UK. And it's no question that voters
(59:50):
are not going to be happy about this.
Gas prices, their energy bills are going to increase on behalf
of this Imperial War adventure. So I expect.
Of which there was actually verylittle public support to begin
with. So the US and Israel are facing
a lot of pressure to stop the aggression.
(01:00:14):
These types of people are not going to give up easily, though.
So it's it's it's very early to tell where to what extent they
might go. And we should expect that they
will go as far as they possibly can until they're forced to
stop. But that force they could find,
they could be met with that force to stop potentially.
(01:00:37):
It's, it's, it's visible. And if those the Israeli chief
of staff of the Israeli army last yesterday said in a cabinet
meeting, I raised 10 red flags right now, the IDF numbers are
are so low that the IDF will collapse in on itself.
(01:00:59):
That's not a light threat. It's not a threat from or a an
alarm bell being rang by a obscure dovish figure.
Greater Israel Project is extremely ambitious.
Occupying and holding Lebanon upuntil the Litani River is very
ambitious. They've never been able to do
(01:01:19):
that before. They tried for decades to hold
territory in Lebanon and they failed.
Why do they think they can do itagain?
It doesn't make any sense. So many options that they've
tried in Lavon have. They've tried all the options.
They've tried to install friendly governments.
In 1982 he was assassin Bashir Jameel, the leader of the
(01:01:43):
Israeli backed Lebanese forces was promptly assassinated and
the successor government, very pro American, collapsed.
The peace agreement collapsed. Lebanese society is not going to
accept normalization and the cost of course is going is
(01:02:04):
great. It could be greater.
But the decision for war and peace, as the sovereigntist in
Lebanon like to say, is not in the hands of a Lebanese state or
the Lebanese resistance. It's in the hands of Israel and
the United States. Yeah, and Israel is suffering
costs as well. Like we're seeing reports that
Kariat Schmuna is no longer occupied and completely vacated.
(01:02:27):
You know, there's the the constant bombing of Tel Aviv.
We know that Israel on like undermine underplays the numbers
that are coming out of injuries and and casualties.
So yeah. So it's also like how, how long
can can can Israel injure, injure this as well?
Exactly. Bezalel Smoltrich's son was
(01:02:49):
injured in Lebanon by the resistance and you can see
pictures of Smoltich in the hospital which was severely
injured son. So this is being felt on them
personally as well, which you know going he can be someone
that will double down people Israel can double down.
Israelis can choose to double down on their on their
(01:03:11):
offensive, but there will be there's a limit to everyone's
power. And if this limit is drawn in
Lebanon OR in Iran, incredibly, then if the Zionist project is
not expanding, you have to startasking, is it contracting?
(01:03:32):
And how will, how will support for the for greater colonization
in Israel be read by the IsraeliJewish population?
Will they have a crisis of confidence?
There's already a deeply dividedsociety.
How will the US and European governments and more
importantly, people see these adventures?
(01:03:57):
They will. There are, we've already seen
hard data that they're withdrawing their support from
Israel on a popular level, if not on a government level.
So where this leads is is is anyone's guess, but there's real
limits to everyone's power. Yeah.
(01:04:20):
Thank you so much, Nate, for joining us today.
Thank you for having. Me.
Thank you. Deep and powerful conversations
about Zionism will never be discussed in the ministry media.
That's why it is imperative thatwe, the free people of the
world, start and support a new media outlets that go deep into
these discussions that need to be heard and discussed.
(01:04:44):
That's why I urge you to supportPalestine Deep Dive with as
little as £2 per month. Go to
palestinedeepdive.com/support.
The connection between Israel and US empire is fundamental.
You have a open project of Raider Israel, which has existed
with designs from the beginning of the Zionist movement.
It's very clear from the beginning from Trump's
statements, the opening of aggression is that they wanted a
(00:20):
full scale regime change in Iran, fighting the 1979
revolution and the hostage crisis of the early 80s.
And when they attacked in the last Lebanon war again, they
always justify it with actions at the bombing of the US Marine
barracks in 1983 by the forces that would become Hezbollah.
(00:43):
They don't forget there are onlyceasefires for one side.
There's constant air strikes that are going on.
They killed over 400 people in Lebanon on a nearly daily basis.
And Israel is suffering costs aswell.
Like we're seeing reports that Kiryat Shmuna is no longer
occupied and completely vacated.There's the, the constant
(01:05):
bombing of Tel Aviv. We know that Israel on like
undermine underplays the numbersthat are coming out of injuries
and, and casualties. So it's also like how, how long
can can can Israel endure endurethis as well?
(01:26):
Welcome to Fronts and Fault Lines, a new podcast in
Palestine Deep Dive, developed by the Palestinian Youth
Movement, an organization of Palestinian and Arab youth in
diaspora struggling for the liberation of our land and
people. I'm Jeanine, an organizer with
the Pym and APHD candidate in Middle East Politics at the
University of Exeter. And I'm Nehal, an organizer with
(01:48):
the Pym and the writer and researcher.
And this series will go beyond headlines and sensationalism,
breaking down the facts on the ground in the Arab and Iranian
region. France and fault lines exists
because the moment we are livingthrough demands more than
breaking news can offer. The Arab and Iranian region is
undergoing an existential moment.
(02:09):
This show is our attempt to think seriously about what is
actually happening, why and whatit means not only for the future
of Palestine, but for the futureof the region as a whole in its
attempts to respond to imperialist and Zionist
aggression. In each episode, we'll be
tackling new developments on theground, going beyond the
headlines, breaking down the facts on the ground, and cutting
(02:30):
through the noise. And because none of this happens
in isolation, we'll also be asking what it means for us here
in Britain, a country whose government, arms industry and
foreign policy are entangled in these wars, whether it
acknowledges that or not. Today we're joined by Nate
George, Lecturer in Politics andthe Middle East at SOAS,
(02:51):
University of London, whose workfocuses on Lebanese politics,
Hezbollah, and the regional dimensions of the Palestinian
struggle. We'll be discussing the
escalating destruction in Lebanon, how the confrontation
between Hezbollah and Israel is unfolding in the context of a
wider regional war, what it tells us about the limits and
possibilities of armed resistance, and what the the
(03:12):
future of Lebanon looks like inside an order that is being
remade by. Force On February 28th, 2026,
the United States and Israel launched a surprise joint attack
on Iran dubbed Operation Epic Fury, targeting military
facilities, nuclear sites and leadership, killing Supreme
Leader Ali Khamenei in a decapitation strike that
(03:33):
shattered whatever remained of the previous rules of
engagement. Iran responded within hours,
naming its counter offensive Operation True Promise for the
quicker response relative to the12 Day War of June 2025,
suggesting a change in Iran's command structure and a shift
from Iran's strategic patience modus operandi following
(03:53):
Khamenei's death. But the opening hours of this
war will be remembered for something else.
On the morning of February 28th,the first day of the Iranian
Working and school week, AUS Tomahawk cruise missile struck
the Shahjara Taiba Girls Elementary School in Manab in
southern Iran's Hormuzgan province.
(04:14):
Over 175 people were killed, more than 100 of them school
children, making it the deadliest civilian strike of the
war to date. When asked about the strike,
this is what President Trump said.
Is the footage that shows that an American missile strike and a
Tomahawk missile likely destroyed that Iranian girls
(04:36):
school? So will the Americans, will the
US accept any responsibility? Well, I haven't seen it.
And I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the
most powerful weapons around, isused by, you know, is sold and
used by other countries. You know that and whether it's
Iran, who also has some Tomahawks, they wish they had
more. But whether it's Iran or
(04:58):
somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk, a Tomahawk is very
generic. It's sold to other countries,
but that's being investigated right now.
You just suggested that Iran somehow got his hands on a
Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first
day of the war. But you're the only person in
your government saying this. Even your Defense Secretary
wouldn't say that when he was asked, standing over your
(05:18):
shoulder on your plane on Saturday.
Why are you the only person saying this?
Because I just don't know enoughabout it.
I think it's something that I was told is under investigation.
But Tomahawks are are used by others.
As you know, numerous other nations have Tomahawks.
They buy them from us. But I will certainly, whatever
the report shows, I'm willing tolive with that report.
(05:41):
Yeah. Plus.
Iran's counter strikes targeted Israeli cities in Tel Aviv and
Haifa, as well as U.S. military bases across the Gulf, Al Haded
in Qatar, Ali asylum in Kuwait, a duffer in the UAE and the US
Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters inBahrain.
Tanker traffic through the stateof Hormuz dropped by
approximately 70%, with over 150ships anchoring outside the
(06:05):
Strait to avoid risk a stranglehold on roughly 20% of
the world's oil supply. And yet the picture that has
emerged from the Axis of resistance is more complicated
than either triumphalism or collapse.
Hezbollah re entered on March 2nd, conducting 9 attacks
against Israeli forces that day,targeting Merkava tanks in Kafar
Kila and launching anti tank guided missiles into Mutula in
(06:29):
northern Israel. Meanwhile, Iraqi militias claim
28 attacks on US and regional targets, with drones and
missiles demonstrating that the Axis has not been destroyed.
The US and Israel's stated aim is regime change and the
permanent elimination of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile
program, although when asked about this, President Trump gave
(06:52):
an incoherent response. Mr. President, you've said the
war is, quote, very complete, but your Defense Secretary says
this is just the beginning. So which is it?
And how long should Americans? Be well, I think you could say
it both the beginning. It's the beginning of building a
new country. The contradiction between those
two statements may be the most honest summary of where American
(07:13):
strategic confidence currently stands.
But for Lebanon, the wars reopening on March 2nd was less
a new beginning than the continuation of something that
had never really stopped. Since the November 2024
ceasefire, Israel had continued attacking Lebanon almost daily,
killing around 500 people, including at least 127
(07:35):
civilians. What scholar Amal Saad has
turned ceasefire warfare? When Hezbollah re entered the
war on March 2nd, it did so in acountry already on its knees,
nearly 1,000,000 people displaced, over 1000 killed, and
an economy that had barely drawnbreath since the 2019 financial
collapse, the port explosion andthe 2024 war.
(07:57):
The question now is what does this war mean for Lebanon, for
Hezbollah's capacity and future,for the Lebanese state's fragile
new government and for the country's place in whatever
regional order emerges? Welcome need to fronts and fault
lines. Oh, we're glad you're with us
today. Thank you so much for having me,
it's a honor. Since the November 2024
(08:18):
so-called ceasefire, UNIFL documented over 10,000 Israeli
violations of Lebanese airspace and nearly 1400 ground
incursions, while Israel also maintained occupation of five
positions inside Lebanese territory it was required to
vacate. Al Masad has described this as
ceasefire warfare, the weaponization of a nominal
(08:39):
ceasefire as cover for ongoing military operations.
Can you characterize what Israelwas actually doing during this
period and what what it was trying to achieve for the wider
war with Iran broke open everything.
That's a great question because first I put it in the bigger
context of what is Israel tryingto achieve?
What are their aims in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Palestine is to
(09:04):
have functionally demilitarized states that are responsive
primarily to Israeli interests and needs rather than their own
people, sort of these Arab facades, to go back to the
language of the mandate period that the British explicitly
used. So basically creating a regional
(09:24):
environment that looks a lot like the Palestinian Authority.
So they conclude these ceasefireagreements in Lebanon and Gaza,
and they're only cease fires forone side.
There's constant air strikes that are going on.
They killed over 400 people in Lebanon on a nearly daily basis
(09:45):
in between November 2024 and March 2026.
So over 15 months, there was nota single violation that on the
Lebanese side of the border thatactually that Israel or the
Lebanese government or UNIFIL had confirmed Hezbollah withdrew
(10:05):
to the to behind the Litani River.
And the Lebanese government, it's even they were even on TV
channels there were showing vacated positions and the halls
of, of weapons that were that were pulled out, which were also
destroyed, mandated by the US and Israel.
The Lebanese army wasn't allowedto, for instance, take those
(10:28):
weapons and add it to the arsenal.
So it's about destroying the capability.
So that's the political side of things.
Now on the social side, the ceasefire was also extremely
grim reality for the southerners, especially those
below on the front line villagesand and below the Litani Israel
(10:51):
during the September to November2024 war and then mostly after
it and that whole period in the ceasefire itself.
They entered villages, set them up with detonation, they charged
them with explosives, videotapedit, and then destroyed entire
villages, village centers and homes.
(11:14):
And so destroying the social environment, the, the, the
business environment, the cultural, religious environment.
You know, mosques that were over300 years old were destroyed in
some of these places like extremely valuable heritage
being lost here. Also, there was a campaign
against the livelihood of rural southern Lebanese people.
(11:38):
They destroyed farmland, they uprooted systematically olive
grows and olive trees, thousandsof olive trees.
They sprayed dangerous pesticides all of through
overflights and I just just justspraying the area with the with
highly dangerous pesticides thatdestroy the crops basically.
(12:00):
So they're creating a scorched earth basically in southern
Lebanon underneath the Litani for they also controlled the
villages. So that it's good that you
mentioned they they took over these five new points of
occupation, but they also enforced what I would call a
remote control occupation from the sky as well, even beyond
(12:22):
that in the villages. So they would obviously about
drone surveillance all the time,air strikes, killing families
regularly. At least 100 civilians were
killed in this period. But also they set, they
terrorized the, the population by setting curfews, for
instance, in villages, by infiltrating and, and, and
(12:48):
literally they would go into people's houses while they were
there and scare them away and make them run away, throw
grenades in their houses. So this is really a a climate of
terror, as I said, that they sewed in Lebanon and mostly
South of the Italian, but all the way they're doing
overflights over southern Beirutand the southern suburbs, Dahia,
(13:13):
the Bekar Valley, all the way N to Baalbek during airstrikes as
well. And in the meantime, the
Lebanese governments didn't haveany effect in stopping these
violations the and they did verylittle to help the displaced.
They didn't or to begin reconstruction.
(13:35):
For instance, what you've seen lately is that individual
activists or families or NGOs are starting GoFundMe campaigns
or, or something similar shows. And this is not this is quite
revealing of the Lebanese state itself and how it has operated
(13:56):
since its inception over just over 100 years ago.
And that this is like a institutionally laissez faire
capitalist economy, not something that it's not a
redistributive welfare state that's looking for the best
interests of people. And the the period was really a
chance that Hezbollah pulled back and said, you know, their
(14:20):
their logic is that in the Lebanese government can step in
with these kind of things to help them.
Of course, actually Hezbollah was paying rent for in many as
much as it could in many situations, providing services
it could in a, in a severely in a, in a degraded environment and
capacity from compared to what they were able to do in 2006.
(14:43):
But this is how I describe the ceasefire was a ceasefire on one
side of the border and not for the people of the South, whereas
the rest of the country was was carried on to a great extent as
much as they could. Yeah, thank you for that.
Because I think that there's almost like a misunderstanding
(15:06):
in a lot of mainstream narratives that, you know, the
Hezbollah entered the war, you know, on October 8th and then
there was a ceasefire and then reentered without actually
contextualizing this period between, you know, the ceasefire
and, and their reentry into the war.
At the same time, Hezbollah's March 2nd re engagement in the
war prompted immediate backlash.So the Lebanese government
(15:30):
formally banned Hezbollah's military activities and demanded
disarmament. In response to that, Hezbollah's
Secretary general Naim Al Qasim reframed the strikes as national
self-defense rather than, you know, solidarity with with Iran.
What do you make of that? Was Hezbollah's re entry gamble?
(15:52):
Was it necessary, given the existential nature of this war
and given what we previously were told of Hezbollah's
degraded state, what is a realistic assessment of its
capacity now in this current, inthis current confrontation, to
impose costs on on Israel? And it's a great question.
So in the situation that we're Ijust described as A1 sided
(16:15):
ceasefire and it is occupation going on physically and remotely
the the government prioritizing a single priority, which was the
to appease the foreign sponsors,the US and behind it Israel by
showing that their main priorityis to disarm the resistance
(16:35):
forces. So and they had sewn this
narrative quite effectively. That came really more from
Israel than anybody else. That Hezbollah had been
completely and utterly destroyed, basically degraded.
It will no longer pose a threat.Its entire leadership was
killed. I mean, this is known.
The pager attacks was an extremely wide thousands of
(16:59):
casualties. People have lost arms, my eyes,
limbs, all at once. These were shocks for sure.
The March 2nd rocket salvo whichwas surprised virtually
everybody, even the constituencyof Hezbollah itself, which had
made their lives somewhat stablein between in the ceasefire
(17:23):
period that was not a ceasefire was surprised and overwhelmed
and expressed a lot of uncertainty and rage even and
was forced to evacuate a short notice even from their villages
and towns and the Lebanese opposition of course and Israel,
the US and and and much of the world media for instance, they
(17:49):
describe that those rockets as what broke the ceasefire instead
of the 15,000 earlier. So the political priorities are
being revealed in those critiques that people are OK
with a huge of 10s of thousands of people living under
occupation de facto or actual and not having safety and
(18:14):
security or their homes or reconstruction.
So the original, so the first week was very controversial, for
instance. But the meaning of that again
has changed in in that the tempoof of the resistance operations
have been has been able to keep up.
Three weeks into the war, we still don't have Israeli
(18:35):
positions further than a few kilometers into Lebanon.
We've seen that Hezbollah has really appeared to have
corrected a lot of its its shortcomings and limitations and
outright errors and penetration that the 2023 to 24 war showed
with the intense knowledge of where the leadership was.
(18:58):
We don't have, we haven't seen any strikes successfully cutting
down known leadership members. And we would know that either
from Hezbollah or most importantly Israel.
So we see instead Israelis following a stat, a strategy of
relentless war crimes in Lebanonis the strategy.
(19:22):
And they openly say that. They say that we will make
Beirut look like Rafa or Khan you.
So they're admitting their own genocidal tactics and and that
is the strategy. Yeah, they tell people to
evacuate and then they bombed the bridges that are going from
the tiny river. Yeah, exactly.
(19:44):
And I think also Hezbollah's response was particularly
surprising given that it's re engagement was taking place in a
fundamentally altered regional geography compared to before.
You know, the fall of the Assad government means that Hezbollah
had lost its primary land corridor for weapons resupply
(20:07):
from Iran. This is a route that it depended
on for over a decade. Syrian territory was once a.
Area of strategic depth for Hezbollah and a training ground
and is now controlled by forces that are broadly hostile to the
axis of resistance. So given this, you know,
(20:28):
changing geopolitical landscape,how do you think this has
changed Hezbollah's operational calculus, calculus in in re
entering the war in in this mostrecent kind of wave of
confrontation? It's a very important question
and it's also connected to the question of the ceasefire that
(20:49):
was that was achieved. It's often not, it's often
forgotten or not remarked that the the offensive of Hayat
Tahrir, Sham of Ahmed Hashara, the offensive that led to the
downfall of the Assad governmentcommenced on the same day,
November 27th, 2024, as the Lebanon ceasefire went into
(21:11):
effect. This shows regional coordination
going on here. And the fall of the Assad regime
was definitely universally seen as a strategic blow to the axis
of resistance and contributed tothe image of a Hezbollah that
(21:31):
would be permanently weakened and an ineffective strategically
defeated is the words that many analysts continue to use in
Western think tanks. For instance, the loss of Syria
as a staging route, as a safe haven also for displaced people
is a major change in the war. In 2006, you had, you know, huge
(21:56):
amounts, probably a million. I don't know the numbers exactly
off the top of my head. Probably more than a million
Lebanese fled to the safety of of Syrian territory at that
time. That's no longer an option.
And now you have 1.3 million Lebanese internally forcibly
displaced in Lebanon, which has of course puts a lot of pressure
(22:19):
on the on the society and the state and inter communal and
political relations as well. But that point about the
regional environment being changed is also very important
as well, because when people analyze this war and often
thinking that it will lead to a similar disastrous outcome as
(22:43):
what has happened in previous Israeli invasions of the past in
197819821978 led to the the realbeginning of direct Israeli
occupation of Lebanon until 2082saw that ejection of the PLO
from Lebanon. In 2024, we saw, you know, the
(23:06):
killing of, of, of the top leadership of Hezbollah and a
new kind of occupation that we've been describing for him.
But the environment is completely different now.
And this is part of, yes, the gamble that was made by
Hezbollah. And it has to be seen for the
(23:26):
first time, this Lebanese resistance is not fighting for
existential survival on its own.In all of those previous
conflicts, there's been no othermajor party engaged in the
battle. And it has and has left Lebanon
exposed to extraordinary Israeliinvasion and, and, and
(23:47):
firepower. That's not the case anymore in
this because of the regime change war that's undergoing in
in Iran. And that's part of what has
changed. Maybe we can go into that a
little bit later. Yeah.
I mean, you've mentioned 1978 and 1982, and I think it's
(24:09):
really important to historicize this.
The constant is really infringement of Lebanese
sovereignty. You mentioned that Israeli
Defence Minister Katz explicitlythreatened that Lebanon will
look like Gaza unless the state acts against Hezbollah.
So you mentioned also Israel bombing central Beirut areas
long considered outside the conference geography, over
(24:32):
1,000,000 people are displaced. How do you situate this
particular moment within Israel's long history of
military intervention in Lebanon, 19781980 to 1996 two
1006? What is generally new here?
And what is Israel repeating, including its own historical
failures? And also what is the importance
(24:53):
of the Litani River as a buffer zone?
And is this related to Israel's Greater Israel project?
There was an Israeli official who said two months ago or three
months ago, we, oh, we don't care about the Sykes Picot
borders, which I found really interesting.
So how, how do you explain this moment and in in comparison to
(25:18):
previous moments, Israeli infringement on new?
So this is a moment of extreme danger for Lebanon and the
region for sure. Israel in its previous
invasions, 1978, that the declared objective was to push
back the resistance and that time it was Lebanese and
(25:39):
Palestinian. The national Lebanese National
Movement parties, left wing, secular and Arab, yes, Arab
nationalist parties were leadingthe military resistance in the
Lebanese side. There was nothing called
Hezbollah or an Islamist Islamicresistance in Lebanon in 1978.
(26:00):
And their goal then was to push the resistance behind the Litani
River. It's it they didn't and they
failed in that in 1978, but theystarted an occupation that a
direct occupation that lasted until 2000 and they found
themselves having to go back in in 1982 because the resistance
(26:23):
strengthened in in Lebanon, especially southern Lebanon
below the Litani. And it showed that was in
control. There was actually before 1982
invasion. There was a year long ceasefire
that had been brokered between the PLO and Israel by the United
States that the Israel was just itching to get rid of and broke
(26:47):
in order to invade with 90,000 or so troops.
And it used the opportunity thatEgypt had just signed the calm
David Accord, so it was out of the equation, so to test this
new Treaty of normalization as well.
That's a very important point. That was already the case in
1978. I we could we could add that
(27:08):
those negotiations were going on.
Sadat had already agreed to be more or less had agreed to stop
fighting Israel in this in this in 1975, a Sinai 2 agreement,
which is also a big episode in the Lebanese civil war that
contributed to the outbreak at that time.
This this regional quarantine ofresistance forces.
(27:31):
And we saw that Israel was able to go in in 78.
It that worked for a time. The US actually told him to to
withdraw, exerted pressure on Israel to withdraw mostly.
So you saw that in US pressure again, key to stopping Israel
when it when push comes to shoveagain in 1982, US pressure put
(27:55):
the red light on Israel eventually when it when it gave
him a green light to go in and then they told him to stop by
August basically. Ronald Reagan called a kin to a
Holocaust. He does very strong words.
Then the story goes some 20 minutes later or so, minutes
(28:16):
later, Israeli bombs are stopping in Beirut.
So there's the connection between Israel and US empire is
fundamental. And we see that there are
contradictions there too, which we can already we can we can
see, I think are going to end upbecoming to play an important
(28:38):
role in the current period. But to get back to the question
of how is this war compare with those the previous episodes you
have now the Israeli you have those really this is an
(28:59):
extremely far right government in Israel, the right to the
right. And you have a open project of
creating new borders greater theproject of greater Israel, which
has existed with designs from the beginning of the Zionist
movement. And and they submitted borders,
proposed borders to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that go
(29:23):
up to the Litani River and in Lebanon, because they want this
water resources is a water scarce area.
And the litany could add a significant source of water for
especially now a, a hard in Israel that's hard pressed for
such scarce resources. So you have that open rhetoric
(29:47):
of annexation going on, which has never occurred in the past.
They always had had set their aims as destroying the
resistance completely in 2006 and 1982.
And what this always does is produce more resistance,
basically more and better and more focused resistances over
(30:09):
time. As what as what come out of
this? Yeah, you see the Israeli
soldiers as well in Lebanon withthe Greater Israel badges on
their uniform, you know. It's no secret anymore.
As we saw recently, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to
Israel, green lighted the idea that Israel should take over the
(30:32):
land of its land from the Nile to the Euphrates as the as
biblical lands allegedly as a biblical testament allegedly
gives up. He just he's interpreted in a
very specific way. But you have AAUS administration
and A and a Zionist regime that is intent on expanding based and
(30:59):
it's it's a highly dangerous moment.
Yeah. And you and you spoke about some
of these contradictions that exist at an international level
or or at even a regional level. And a lot of these in some ways
are kind of mirrored at a domestic level or an internal
level in Lebanon. I often think that you can't
understand our region without understanding Lebanon because it
(31:21):
is in many ways, like a representation of a lot of
contradictions that exist at a broader level in, in kind of
one, in one place. And Lebanon now has a government
under Nawaf Salaam that has beentaking genuinely unprecedented
steps. You know, first of all, formally
banning Hezbollah's military activities.
(31:43):
He's also ordered the deportation of IRGC personnel
and also calls for disarmament. And yet the army commander
reportedly refused to confront Hezbollah the March 2nd cabinet
session. So, you know, these
contradictions aren't new, but they are kind of manifesting in
a, a, a, a particular way in this moment.
(32:06):
How deep do you think these contradictions go?
And what happens to these contradictions and to Lebanese
political space, including kind of the fragile conversation
around normalization that we seepoliticians kind of like
skirting around after this war, if and when this war ends?
(32:29):
That's a very, again, excellent question.
So I think you're absolutely right to de exceptionalize the
struggles of Lebanese politics and show that the trends that
exist in Lebanon's more open political system and environment
are not shake. It's not a sectarian curiosity
(32:51):
only. It's not there's resistance and
there's pro resistance and pro colonial forces in every Arab
country and it's real social constituencies for them.
So that in Egypt and, and for instance, comes to mind, but the
Lebanese fronts of the war for Palestine has always been
(33:14):
notable for the amount of local mobilized on the ground,
opposition to to resistance forces.
And that's what the Lebanese civil war was about.
And between this 1975 and 90 andeven the 1958 war is that
ultimately the battle lines are about Philo colonial or pro
(33:36):
colonial forces versus anti colonial.
Yeah, and it's it's it's important that you say that
because I think there's a misconception that it was a
sectarian war when actually it was on these lines of, you know,
colonialism or Philo colonialismand anti colonialism.
Definitely. And then and those.
But you know the politics of identity.
Yeah, of course. Like anywhere in the world, from
(33:57):
the US to the UK to Lebanon are also stratified by people's
identity and how the narratives of of, of, of identity and
politics and political loyalty and authority are created are
mobilized by people with agendaspolitically.
(34:19):
And you have that that is stratified along sectarian lines
to a a great extent in Lebanon because you can look at the, you
know, it's not everybody's living in the same area into an
equal amount or something that all this different sects.
(34:40):
You have the closest community to Palestine geographically, and
that's dominate as the demographic majority
overwhelmingly in the South of the Shia population.
You have Christians, you have Druze there too, you have some
Sunnis, but it's overwhelmingly the people closest to Palestine
have been the Shia community andthey experienced occupation
(35:02):
1948, the loss of territory fromtheir villages even that remain
on the border, They lost money territories.
There's seven villages that wereethnically cleansed, completely
destroyed the Appa, most, most of which were Shia, some of them
also Christian as well. And you had a Lebanese
(35:24):
government's institutional setupwhich politically prioritized
and gave the Christian community, the Maronite
Christian community in particular, not just any
Christians, but Maronite Christians decisive power before
the civil war and, and, and mandated Christian majority in
the parliament on a six to five ratio based on this 1932
(35:48):
colonial. Census and you can even see that
on how Palestinians were treatedin Lebanon as well, like the
Palestinian Christians, a lot ofthem were nationalized or given
citizenship and that's quite different to how the Muslim
population was treated as well, so.
Absolutely. And you see, even earlier than,
even before there was Palestinian refugees in the
(36:10):
Mandate period, you had Armenianrefugees being given
citizenship, the boost Christiannumbers and Kurdish refugees
being denied and citizenship or nomadic populations.
So in between Lebanon and Syria being denied citizenship and
nationality. I think this is important that
(36:31):
there is an institutionalized Christian supremacy in the
Lebanese political system. That certainly has changed since
the civil war slightly, I mean to, to changed, but from 1975
you had up leading up to the 1975 war, you had a huge
(36:51):
imbalance of power based on sectarian calculations and in
Lebanon and you had a Maronite Christian elites that didn't
want to, that saw only somethingto lose by getting involved in
Palestine now without reason, because we can see how
(37:12):
devastating it has been. Now it's, it's it.
You could, you could easily argue that aligning with Israel
in and fighting side by side with it and carrying out
extensive massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese
(37:34):
Muslims by those Lebanese Christian nationalist parties
that are represented in the government today, that that
actually that's not being neutral.
That's actually taking aside andincreasing the problem,
increasing the social distrust. So we're seeing a big replay of
(37:54):
many of the dynamics that led tothe emergence of a serious
resistance in opposition in Lebanon.
Opposition to the Lebanese political system itself is what
mobilized 10s of thousands of people in the in the 1960s and
70s. I think what's the parallels to
(38:15):
Camp David are really interesting.
And like, you know, when you talk about the Lebanese factions
that think is the war with with Israel that's halting Lebanese
economic progress. Some factions in Egypt thought
the same, like led by Sadat and the ruling classes.
And that, you know, if Egypt were to sign the Camp David
(38:35):
Accords and the normalization agreement and move from the
Soviet camp to the US camp, thenit would become almost like the
Japan of the Middle East or the Singapore of the Middle East.
And yes, well, you know, there were no more wars with Israel.
But you know, you see, today theimpoverishment actually worsens.
(38:55):
Like there was no prosperity. The promise of prosperity and
promise of, you know, economic Wellness just never arrived.
That's such an important point because this is kind of what
seems to drive the trend of normalization in Lebanon and the
wider Arab world, is that the idea is if we stop fighting is
(39:21):
if we stop fighting for palace, for our rights and for
Palestinian rights. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a
jaw. It's a impossible task.
And we'll only have everything to gain by surrendering.
And we can see with Egypt's and and other cases that that's not
the case. There's not going to be some
showering of prosperity that comes out of nowhere, money
(39:44):
falling from the sky basically that's going to go and be evenly
distributed around the society to build schools, roads,
etcetera. Healthcare, for instance,
provide a Social Security safetynet.
This is not what's on the table with normalization with Israel.
What's on the table is. Hardening of authoritarian
(40:10):
control that seeks to protect Israeli interests.
And we can also go back into Lebanese history to see the kind
of peace that they're trying to impose.
Lebanon did sign a de facto peace agreement with Israel in
May 1983 after the 1982 invasion.
(40:31):
It's called the May 17th Agreement.
It stipulated very many things for Israel to have the right to
attack Lebanon anytime it wantedto was anytime it deemed a
threat. Even more insidiously, it
demanded the in cessation of allhostile propaganda against
(40:53):
Israel and the Zionist movement.What does that mean?
That means the end of free speech of a free expression in
Lebanon, which is supposedly something that the partisans of
the Lebanese regime care about deeply, but they they would
willing. But what they want is to
(41:14):
actually muzzle all political discussion and and to simply
link up with the US and Gulf project and now looks very shaky
6. Yeah, and you can see the end
result of that in Egypt today with people, you know, even
people posting stickers, Palestine stickers on walls or
(41:37):
unfurling banners are still in prison today since the beginning
of the genocide. Jordan similar things going
arresting activists as well. So this is what's in and
obviously the Gulf countries arein no way representative
institute have no political representation for active or
(42:00):
free speech or free organization.
There's no political freedom in in those in those locations
here. So if we zoom back out again,
the stated US rationale for Operation Epic Fury was Iran's
nuclear program and ballistic missile capacity, even though
(42:22):
that kept changing with every official statement.
But Israel simultaneously killedKhamenei, struck cultural
heritage sites, and is now engaged in full scale war in
Lebanon. What is the actual strategic
vision here? Is there one queer plan shared
between the US or Israel? Or are there divergent agendas
(42:42):
operating under the same military campaign?
And how I know we talked about this before, but how seriously
should we take this Greater Israel project as an operative
ideology and what would a successful access of resistance
response look like now that the war, it seems it's not going
according to plan for, for the US and you know, we see this
(43:04):
competing ideas of of of the remaking of the region.
What would that look like? That's the that's the big
questions, right? Simple question.
There is good asking you to predict.
So, yeah, I'll try as a historian, we like to resist
predictions because obviously what happens is can be so many
(43:26):
things that can happen. To take the question of what is
the US and Israel want. It's very clear from the
beginning from Trump's statements the opening of of the
of the aggression is that they wanted a full scale regime
change in Iran, fighting the 1979 revolution and the hostage
(43:50):
crisis of the early 80s. And when they attacked in the
last Lebanon war again, they always justify it with actions
at the bombing of the US Marine barracks in 1983 by the forces
that would become Hezbollah. They don't forget empire has a
long memory. Donald Trump himself is at his
(44:11):
administration are guys that watch these events.
They are motivated by revenge for these humiliations they've
eventually faced that they fade the United States face.
And this is kind of like and forthem reading it as a as as these
(44:32):
revenge for the for these moments where US empire, the
limits were exposed and these defeats were imposed after the
barracks bombing in the US in Lebanon, the US which had a
peacekeeping quote, UN quote, peacekeeping contingent,
military contingent in the country withdrew and and they
(44:55):
remember that. So what they are seeking is a a
return to US hegemony in Iran, which was the case before Shah
was there. Now I think that it was more
along the case of what they werewanting was for a repeat of the
Venezuela scenario where they have where they killed the head
(45:19):
of state, they overwhelmed as a shock and awe attack and they
make a deal with some elements of the regime that are that
they're able to live with and that they're able to dictate the
terms. So eventually now they grossly
miscalculated that in Iran. Now Israel for its part is
(45:42):
serious about the greater Israelproject.
It's is less about regime changeand is seeking less regime
change rather than more of a state and society collapse in
Iran when like a. Syrianization of Iran or
Vulcanization of Iran? Exactly as they an ethnic
(46:04):
Balkanization, they they from the first days of the war were
inciting Kurdish rebellion against the state.
For instance, they attempt to instrumentalize Kurdish groups
in Iraq against the state not panning out.
There's of course Arab and Baloch minorities as well that
they're targeting with with propaganda.
(46:26):
And this is also a historic strategy of Israel and the
United States to weaponize identity and minority
populations in states all aroundthe world.
This is what they did. And and this is a huge part of
the Lebanese civil war was finding at least making alliance
(46:47):
with these Philo colonial elements that are willing to set
themselves out against the rest of society.
Castle J in the Vietnam War, forinstance, as well and and
elsewhere now. So the Israelis would be happy
with a state that's just not functional, a total state of
(47:09):
chaos, shattering of Israeli society.
The US and the Arab and Turkish allies of the US would not like
such a scenario because it wouldcause extraordinarily refugee
crisis, chaos on their borders, the disruption of regular
capital accumulation. I mean, Netanyahu said Turkey's
(47:31):
next after Iran despite it beingAUS ally.
Exactly. Seeing any country with a big
military, you know, despite its leadership being favourable to
the US or not as a threat, as future threat.
So that shows that it's not willing to stop even if it
succeeds in Iran, which doesn't look like it is currently.
(47:54):
It doesn't look like it is no, but so, but the Israelis have
all the incentive in the world to continue this for as long as
they can. Whereas the US is now feeling
the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and the, and the power
that Iran has demonstrated in and the leverage that it has
(48:15):
shown in attacking, it's in to agreat extent, destroying US
bases all over the Gulf, stopping liquid natural gas
production in Qatar, which aloneis worth 20% of the whole world
supply. They're seeing there's this is
the biggest energy crisis in world history already.
(48:37):
And we're only in the beginning.Basically this, the fallout
effects of this can happen for could, could ripple out and last
for years. And the US is not as insulated
as Israel is from that MAGA. Donald Trump's, you know, the
(48:57):
Donald Trump's base was not his America firsters, allegedly.
They're not interested in a major ground war.
You can't change the regime via the air.
It never has worked in history. You need ground forces, whether
they're local or or regional or foreign, you know that could,
(49:20):
you know, you need ground forcesto take over and set up a new
government Basically that's not going to happen from the air.
But you're seeing the leverage is really in the Iranian side
right now by no one can open thestraight there. the US has set
deadlines for Iran to capitulate.
(49:41):
That has now passed twice and UShas done nothing about it.
Are they going to, are they planning something?
Most definitely. They're most definitely.
They're not just going to let this slide.
They don't. That's not how they do it, and
especially not the Trump administration, who is.
And Pete Hagseth, the US 10 finished minister of war that
(50:05):
the secretary of war as he renamed the Defense Department
his whole he made a career out of saying we should throw out
rules and regulations and warfare.
Basically. This is has a long history too
of if he's refighting the Vietnam War.
The right wing critique of of the US and Vietnam was that how
(50:29):
could we lose to these ragtag Vietnamese peasants?
We should have. We were fighting with one hand
tied behind our back because thepolitical leadership wouldn't
let us use our full arsenal. Hey, Seth comes out of this
tradition saying we're going to use our foolish and we're not
going to clutch our pearls. And Israel for a long time has
(50:51):
been the idol or the the, the best case scenario in, in, in
those militarist writers in the United States, they say, look,
here is a country that is, that doesn't fight according to the
rules and that gets the job doneand, and, and, and succeeds.
(51:12):
So you have here this merging ofa ultra militaristic American
right wing and Israeli right wing in power to have brought
upon this aggression that for decades Pentagon planners had
been saying no, this is not absolutely such a project would
not be worth it. Which is an argument against the
(51:33):
realist position that, you know,Israel's What?
The US support for Israel is completely irrational at this
point. No, it shows that they're in
tandem. There is, you know, it's
difficult to assess the, the, the US, Israeli relationship is
interesting. There's those that say the US is
(51:54):
in full control. They're doing this because, you
know, simply for US region reasons.
And then there's the Israeli lobby arguments, as in what
Israel is, what the US is doing is on behalf of Israel and it's
not in the American interests. And I don't really find either
(52:14):
side of this to have come be conclusively convincing and
making the argument about the entire nature of the
relationship, no. I was just going to say I find a
lot of those arguments kind of like divorced from like any
analysis of imperialism, which Ithink is worse.
Maybe the analytic deficit maybecomes from but.
Yeah, I mean the it's not mutually exclusive either way.
(52:37):
There's sometimes and I think this is a case where we've seen
that the Israeli government and it's and the Zionists law.
They made a huge effort convincethe United States to do this
whereas other imperial administrator and they were able
to find receptive audience in the Trump administration to go
(52:59):
on this adventure. It's you could say it's in the
imperial interest. Yes, to destroy the axis of
recent certainly is in the Imperial interest to do, though
it's not always in the Imperial interest to Just because you can
do it doesn't mean you should, is how another group of
Imperialists would say. And that we're actually
incinerating our own influence with this war, which there seems
(53:22):
to be a great deal of evidence pointing towards that being the
case. Yeah.
You mentioned that Iran has someleverage now.
So if we look at it from the Iranian side, Iranian strategic
doctrine has long including whatanalysts call horizontal
escalation, the idea that ratherthan matching an adversary blow
for blow vertically, Iran activates pressure across
(53:45):
multiple arena simultaneously. And you mentioned that, you
know, the US, you know, is not abiding by war rules anymore.
But it seems that Iran has also,you know, moved beyond its
strategic patience doctrine. So do you think Iran is is still
capable of restoring the turns through this model?
(54:08):
Or are we watching the doctrine survive and name while its
infrastructure has collapsed? Like what do you think the
future for Iran and and this newescalation that we're seeing and
maybe also the. Region you know people are
talking about. The region is going to be
forever changed, for better or worse.
Yet how the Gulf, you know, the,the, the new bombing of, of the
(54:33):
Gulf like this is unprecedented.What the, what that means for,
you know, Gulf leadership like what, what, what does the future
hold? Yeah, without again asking you
to predict the search. Complex questions about if we
look closely and read what's happening closely, we can
already see the outlines of future possibilities.
(54:59):
You see with the attacks on the Gulf, I mean, it's clear that
the US and Israel did not or theGulf didn't adequately prepare
for the Iranian response to to close down the straight.
They've even said they did. They didn't expect them to close
down the straight, which is odd considering Iran has telegraphed
(55:19):
exactly that as their maximum strategy.
They did that again. They've caused huge losses to
the Gulf regimes and American bases.
Those bases, which were built upover decades of time in the Cold
War era, starting all the way tothe present, will not be easy to
(55:40):
rebuild. We don't know.
We, it's, it's difficult to say they won't be rebuilt.
The Gulf, the GCC countries haveall the money in the world,
basically. But what they don't have forever
is American political will. Can I imagine the American
population after this war is going to be excited about a new
(56:02):
billions and trillions of dollars of commitment I will be
required to rebuild these these Gulf monarchies?
No, I actually don't think that there's going to be a lot of
appetite in the American public for that at all.
There's. While maintaining its hundreds
of bases around the world as well.
And and and Asia, yeah. Correct.
(56:24):
So then the question is, what isthe Gulf going to do?
What are the Gulf countries going to do about it?
They have lots of money. Will they invite?
Will they create? Will they?
Will they pay for their will? They say America will pay for it
and you come or put up a patchwork of private security
contractors to create basis. They don't have populations that
(56:48):
can be converted into an army. Their military, their military
and strategic posture is going to be re evaluated after this.
They've also seen how the UnitedStates has prioritized Israeli
interests. And I think Netanyahu's speech
the other week or I can't remember what it was, was quite
(57:10):
revealing. He says when he said, well, we
don't need these Gulf, we don't need the Strait of Hormuz
anymore. Basically what we want to see is
the GCC countries putting pipelines to Israel.
They go on the Israeli, they endup in the Israeli coast and they
go to Europe there. That fits very well within a
greater Israel project. And he would be happy he doesn't
(57:33):
the the Israelis would be happy to see these Gulf regimes become
more subordinate to it. So that that is also pushing
Israel to go further and creating potential areas of
friction between the Gulf regimes and Israel and the
United States. We also and who has the upper
hand right now? It's hard to say that Iran
(57:57):
doesn't because we know that allof its death has not been
activated yet. The Houthis in Yemen or the
Ansar al Law the could easily shut down Babel Mandeb Straits
which is a enormous chokehold chokehold for the global
(58:19):
economy. The withdrawal of the US
completely from Iraq, which we just saw happen.
NATO troops in the US and Austin, the other other NATO
missions there just withdrew completely from Iraq due to,
yeah, the fighting and intensitydue to this war there.
(58:43):
And so there's huge cards that Iran has yet to play already.
Now the US, you have Gallant, Gallant, they wanted
international war criminal, indicted war criminal published
an article this week detailing why he thinks now is the time
that the US must act to seize Hague Island from Iran where
(59:07):
Iran exports 90% of its oil. So Israel is, is ordering the
United States or kindly requesting that the US troops be
sent to occupy an island in the middle of the the Gulf.
They'll be sitting ducks for Iranian missiles and targets at
(59:28):
at the very best. So Israel is looking to push
this as far as it can go. Now all that economic the the so
far the economic choke point of Strait of Hormuz has already
caused interest rates to increase and projections to
increase in the US and the UK. And it's no question that voters
(59:50):
are not going to be happy about this.
Gas prices, their energy bills are going to increase on behalf
of this Imperial War adventure. So I expect.
Of which there was actually verylittle public support to begin
with. So the US and Israel are facing
a lot of pressure to stop the aggression.
(01:00:14):
These types of people are not going to give up easily, though.
So it's it's it's very early to tell where to what extent they
might go. And we should expect that they
will go as far as they possibly can until they're forced to
stop. But that force they could find,
they could be met with that force to stop potentially.
(01:00:37):
It's, it's, it's visible. And if those the Israeli chief
of staff of the Israeli army last yesterday said in a cabinet
meeting, I raised 10 red flags right now, the IDF numbers are
are so low that the IDF will collapse in on itself.
(01:00:59):
That's not a light threat. It's not a threat from or a an
alarm bell being rang by a obscure dovish figure.
Greater Israel Project is extremely ambitious.
Occupying and holding Lebanon upuntil the Litani River is very
ambitious. They've never been able to do
(01:01:19):
that before. They tried for decades to hold
territory in Lebanon and they failed.
Why do they think they can do itagain?
It doesn't make any sense. So many options that they've
tried in Lavon have. They've tried all the options.
They've tried to install friendly governments.
In 1982 he was assassin Bashir Jameel, the leader of the
(01:01:43):
Israeli backed Lebanese forces was promptly assassinated and
the successor government, very pro American, collapsed.
The peace agreement collapsed. Lebanese society is not going to
accept normalization and the cost of course is going is
(01:02:04):
great. It could be greater.
But the decision for war and peace, as the sovereigntist in
Lebanon like to say, is not in the hands of a Lebanese state or
the Lebanese resistance. It's in the hands of Israel and
the United States. Yeah, and Israel is suffering
costs as well. Like we're seeing reports that
Kariat Schmuna is no longer occupied and completely vacated.
(01:02:27):
You know, there's the the constant bombing of Tel Aviv.
We know that Israel on like undermine underplays the numbers
that are coming out of injuries and and casualties.
So yeah. So it's also like how, how long
can can can Israel injure, injure this as well?
Exactly. Bezalel Smoltrich's son was
(01:02:49):
injured in Lebanon by the resistance and you can see
pictures of Smoltich in the hospital which was severely
injured son. So this is being felt on them
personally as well, which you know going he can be someone
that will double down people Israel can double down.
Israelis can choose to double down on their on their
(01:03:11):
offensive, but there will be there's a limit to everyone's
power. And if this limit is drawn in
Lebanon OR in Iran, incredibly, then if the Zionist project is
not expanding, you have to startasking, is it contracting?
(01:03:32):
And how will, how will support for the for greater colonization
in Israel be read by the IsraeliJewish population?
Will they have a crisis of confidence?
There's already a deeply dividedsociety.
How will the US and European governments and more
importantly, people see these adventures?
(01:03:57):
They will. There are, we've already seen
hard data that they're withdrawing their support from
Israel on a popular level, if not on a government level.
So where this leads is is is anyone's guess, but there's real
limits to everyone's power. Yeah.
(01:04:20):
Thank you so much, Nate, for joining us today.
Thank you for having. Me.
Thank you. Deep and powerful conversations
about Zionism will never be discussed in the ministry media.
That's why it is imperative thatwe, the free people of the
world, start and support a new media outlets that go deep into
these discussions that need to be heard and discussed.
(01:04:44):
That's why I urge you to supportPalestine Deep Dive with as
little as £2 per month. Go to
palestinedeepdive.com/support.
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