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- [00:00]
A
As events accelerate in the Middle east, the team here at ARC Media is increasing our coverage. More conversations, more context, more time spent trying to help make sense of what's happening. And all with an expanding cast of podcast hosts, analysts and journalists. Our Inside CallMeBack subscribers help make this expanded coverage possible. It helps us be here when it matters most. If you're not yet an inside Call Me Back subscriber, this is an important time to join us. To subscribe, you can follow the link in our show Notes or visit ark media.org and to our insiders. Thank you. You are listening to an ARC Media podcast.
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B
I think that when an Arab government that's been at war with Israel says we are willing to sit down at the table with you, Israel should say yes every time. That doesn't mean you say yes to everything they ask for, but you say yes to that meeting. When the President of the United States says, let's meet in my office, you say yes and you explore what is possible. So Israel's not going to ever just put its security in someone else's hands and go to sleep. But if the Lebanese armed forces can be deployed in the south to reclaim their own territory and to remove the Hezbollah threat from Israel's border, that's something worth exploring.
- [01:35]
A
10:00am on Sunday, April 26 here in New York City. It is 5:00pm On Sunday, April 26, in Israel. Today we are taking a closer look at what's been happening along Israel's northern border since the 2024 ceasefire with the government of Lebanon and why. Despite the pause in full scale war fighting with Hezbollah, the situation is increasingly unstable. While Hezbollah's capabilities were severely degraded during the 2024 war, Israel has been operating under the view that the threat from Hezbollah never really went away. While the agreement called for the Lebanese government and the Lebanese armed forces to pull Hezbollah back from southern Lebanon and for the Lebanese armed forces to step in, Israeli officials argue that implementation has been incomplete at best. In response, Israel has continued carrying out targeted strikes against what it sees as emerging threat, particularly weapons transfers and infrastructure tied to Hezbollah and its Iranian backers. At the same time, Hezbollah has been working to rebuild, quietly restoring its arsenal and reorganizing. Lebanon's internal crisis has made it difficult for the sovereign state of Lebanon to fully rein in the terror group, which leaves Israel facing a familiar dilemma how to prevent a stronger Hezbollah from re emerging without triggering another major war. Israel's north has already paid a heavy price. During the fighting in 2024, tens of thousands of civilians were forced to evacuate their homes as rockets and missiles targeted border communities. And even now, not everyone has been able to return. The IDF also suffered casualties in what has been a difficult campaign against a deeply entrenched opponent. All of this shapes how Israel is approaching the current moment with a focus on security, prevention and the long term goal of making northern Israel safe again. All this against the backdrop of ongoing negotiations right now in real time, between the government of Israel and the government of Lebanon, mediated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. So to unpack this fragile status quo, what's really changed since the ceasefire, what hasn't, what's going on with these negotiations and where things might be heading next, Matt Levitt returns to the podcast. Matt is currently at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has had a number of positions in government, including in intelligence at the US Department of Treasury. And prior to that, he was a counterterrorism expert for the FBI, where he served in that role during 9 11. And he is a longtime expert on Hezbollah, Iran and the regional security dynamics. Matt, thanks for coming back to the podcast.
- [04:20]
B
Always a pleasure, Dan. Thanks for having me.
- [04:22]
A
So I just want to frame things up in terms of how we got to where we are having this conversation. Israel and Lebanon entered a ceasefire on November 27, 2024, that while it was a ceasefire between the government of Lebanon and the government of Israel, the real target of that agreement was Hezbollah. So can we start by just telling us what that agreement was? Just refresh our memory. What was the agreement supposed to do?
- [04:47]
B
The agreement was supposed to disarm Hezbollah first in southern Lebanon, that is south of the Latani river, where Hezbollah had built up a significant force of fighters and above and below ground bunkers filled with rockets, munitions, et cetera, that had been threatening northern communities for a year and a half. And then it was supposed to be expanded north of the litany to all of Lebanon and giving the Lebanese government an opportunity to establish a monopoly over the use of force. Remember, now there's a new government in Lebanon under President Aoun, the former head of the Lebanese Armed Forces, that is no fan of Hezbollah. And the ceasefire was intended to create an opportunity where the fighting would stop. Hezbollah had taken a severe beating, which is why they kind of de facto acquiesced to the ceasefire. And the Lebanese armed forces did in fact, deploy to the south and started doing things, but it never went quite as far as supposed to go.
- [05:47]
A
Okay, and how many of Hezbollah's troops, rockets, military hardware, were taken out either because of kinetic activities by the IDF before the Ceasefire or as a result of the implementation of the ceasefire and how much remain? Just generally.
- [06:03]
B
So leading up to the ceasefire, the IDF significantly degraded Hezbollah, killing thousands of Hezbollah fighters and we believe taking out as much as 80% of Hezbollah's rocket arsenal, including the vast majority of their most dangerous precision long range rockets, the precision guided munitions. The threat from Hezbollah was severely degraded, but the organization was still there, it still presented real threats, and it was present elsewhere in Lebanon, including in the Dahya, the neighborhood in South Beirut, where they have a stronghold in the Bekka Valley. But the IDF had severely degraded their capabilities in the south. And yet there was still more to do, which is why the Lebanese armed forces were supposed to go in under the ceasefire and fight fully disarm the group.
- [06:48]
A
Okay, I want to come back to what the Lebanese armed forces were supposed to do or what they fell short of doing. But before we get to that, now tell us a little bit about what life has been like in northern Israel since the ceasefire in 2024. I think our listeners are well aware of what life was like in northern Israel before the ceasefire, just in terms of how daily life there had largely hollowed out for many, many months following October 7th. It was just uninhabitable because it was just too dangerous. And. And then people started to come back. I think people were returning even before the ceasefire, but then especially after the ceasefire. So I don't think people know much about what life has been like there since. Call it fall of 2024.
- [07:29]
B
Dan I've been up to Israel's northern border several times over the past few years. And before the ceasefire, Israeli civilians were not returning. It was largely depopulated. And when I would go up, I'd have to go up, you know, with military escort. After the ceasefire, it was very different. And I was able to rent a car and drive up all the way to the Blue Line and meet the people who were going to brief me right there. The communities were still not fully populated. Not everybody has come home. People are still scared. But a bunch of people had. And I remember visiting one row of houses that literally overlooks the Blue Line. And one house was already starting to rebuild. The house next door was still completely destroyed. And that pattern kind of continued as you went down the block. And people were trying to figure out how much confidence and security did they feel because people understood that Hezbollah still existed, though it was badly beaten down. And could you actually deter a group like this that is committed from an ideological, even theological perspective to your destruction?
- [08:29]
A
When you say the Blue Line. That's the line that was established when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. It's like a 75 mile, I think, approximate line. That is for all practical purposes, the security border between Israel and Lebanon.
- [08:42]
B
Yes, this is the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon. It's called the blue line because it was demarcated by the United Nations. United nations forces wear blue helmets. So the blue line, and it is literally marked by blue colored barrels, painted barrels along the line. There's pretty much an agreement as to what the ultimate border would look like. The amount of border changes that would needed to be made were there to be some type of peace deal would be very, very small. Recall that Israel and Lebanon already demarcated the maritime border. So blue line is a reference to the de facto Israeli Lebanese border.
- [09:16]
A
Matt, There's a real sense that Israelis living in northern Israel have been very frustrated about how difficult life is up there. And it's a real source of tension inside Israel and kind of the intra Israel political dynamic social fabric. For instance, during this most recent war with Iran, we would see all these images of people in their bomb shelters and their mamas. The sirens would go off and you'd be talking to an Israeli who's in central Israel and they'd be like, oh, my phone just said, you know, there's a warning and then there's a siren. But there was a sense that while they had to rush for shelter, they had 10 minutes, they had 50 minutes, they could wait for the second alert. They had a little bit, you know, it's all relative. Of course, they had a little bit of flexibility in the timing in northern Israel, given how close Israeli communities are to the threat, they have none of that cushion. Right. When the warnings, the alerts go out, they're very, very close to the origin of the threat, which makes the whole situation very dire. So I'm just sort of adding all this up to try to capture how stressful it is for Israelis that still live up there. And I just. Maybe you could provide some anecdote or insight into that based on your recent visits up there.
- [10:23]
B
That's exactly right. There's a sense of the people who live in the north that there's no time to run to a shelter. And I have to admit, that's not the only concern. Their concern also is that there's now a lot of information that's come out since October 7 that Hezbollah had intended to do the same and to follow suit and to storm across Israel's border into those northern communities in Past years, when I've gone up to the northern border, Israeli officials had briefed me time and time again about Hezbollah's plot to do what ultimately became what Hamas did on October 7 down in the south, but up in the north. And people up north are very, very wary of moving back because they're afraid that something like that could happen. Remember, they're also quite frustrated with the government because some people got money to move into hotels. Living in a hotel for a long time is really hard. Some people didn't get money, they moved in with relatives and it disrupted lives in a huge way. And then services aren't what they regularly were. It's not like you move back and you're going to have the regular school system and all the kids, friends. You're moving back into ghost town. Do you want to be the first, second or third person to go? At the end of the day, until there is a sense of real security, people are not going to move back into the north. Which is why you have mayors of Israeli towns in the north right now being very critical of the ceasefire, because they just don't trust that the Lebanese government is going to do what's necessary to truly disarm Hezbollah, based in part in the fact that they didn't do everything they needed to do. They did some, but not everything they needed to do last time.
- [11:47]
A
All right, so over the past few months, the IDF has been increasingly active in Lebanon. For starters, just paint us a picture of the IDF's military campaign there, its scale, its achievements, what they're actually trying to root out.
- [11:58]
B
The IDF is trying to really root out two things. One is remaining weapons depots, tunnels, bunkers, underground facilities, storage of weapons in private homes, which the Lebanese armed forces had been unwilling to deal with. They had this issue about entering private property on the one hand. On the second hand, doing everything possible to prevent Hezbollah from trying to reestablish its position in the south, which Hezbollah officials like Wafi Safa have been quite open about. He spoke to PBS and said, yeah, we've been trying to rebuild our capabilities in the south very quietly over the past 15 months of the ceasefire. And based on my research, it became very clear that for all that the Lebanese armed forces had done and they had seized some weapons, that actually Hezbollah was winning the race to disarm. They were rearming at a faster pace, then the Lebanese armed forces were disarming him. And so this was the dynamic that the IDF was trying to prevent.
- [12:53]
A
And just technically, here was Israel doing this outside the lines of the Ceasefire agreement. I mean, the whole idea, wasn't it that Israel was not going to have to go back in?
- [13:03]
B
The idea was that the Lebanese armed forces would truly disarm Hezbollah. And to facilitate that, something called the mechanism was created, a US led mechanism. The French played a role too, whereby the Israelis and the Lebanese would be able to communicate through this US mechanism. Previously they'd been able to communicate in theory through unifil, the UN force in southern Lebanon. But UNIFIL has been extremely ineffective. They don't have a mandate to fight Hezbollah. They were supposed to observe and report Hezbollah activity. They neither observed it and typically failed to report it either. And when there was communication, when the Israelis would provide intelligence about Hezbollah activities to the Lebanese through unifil, it would take a very long time and typically the Lebanese wouldn't do anything about it. When it was done through the mechanism, the information would go very quickly and sometimes the Lebanese armed forces would do something about it. And that was a big step forward. But what happened was that the Lebanese armed forces didn't do everything necessary. So the Israelis had a side letter, a side understanding with the United States that was explicit. That said, if there's a threat to Israel, Israel retains the right to address that threat. And under that understanding, the IDF has continued to target Hezbollah operatives when they are found moving weapons, doing operational activity in the south, when they find weapons stores that the LAF wouldn't take care of. And they're doing that on a regular basis as an ongoing operation to disrupt Hezbollah activity in the south, which is supposed to be happening by Lebanon under the ceasefire, and to protect the communities in the north of Israel. In terms of the IDF activity that's happening now, the IDF has established a small number of forward operating bases just over the line in southern Lebanon, typically on high points on hilltops that have good observation across a W range so they can see activity before it comes to the border. They're operating several kilometers into Lebanon, establishing a security zone that they maintain they have to operate in until the Lebanese armed forces are willing to come in and do what has to be done. You have not just the 91st Brigade, which is typically along the northern border, but the 98th and others. You have a significant deployment into Lebanon right now because for Israel, it's completely untenable for a significant swath of the country in the north to be unlivable. And so even as Israel is fighting a war against Iran, together with the United States, and even as there still is Hamas occupying half of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli focus On Lebanon is really a primary area for both the military and for politicians because it affects the lives of a significant number of Israeli citizens living in the north.
- [15:41]
A
Matt, where has the fighting been most intense recently?
- [15:44]
B
And now the fighting has been most intense right along the blue line in places like Ben Jebel, in towns like Assadiya, where Hezbollah has effectively created kind of military bases within Shia communities. Hezbollah typically will go up to someone and say, which room in your house is the room where we're going to store rockets? And under the ceasefire, when Israel would provide information to Lebanon through that mechanism saying, hey, there are weapons in this house? Typically the Lebanese armed forces would say, well, that's private property. We can't go in there. And so what's happening now is that the Israelis are destroying those homes. Not randomly destroying homes, but destroying homes where there were weapons. Just before the war with Iran began, I was on this border in Miskav Am, on the Israeli side, overlooking the town of Assadiya on the Lebanese side. And you could see just how broad the destruction was. And I spent a long time there getting briefed by officials on what was happening, sometimes in which house, but certainly in which. Which neighborhood and why. There were certain places that were still standing when so many others were not. And unfortunately, Hezbollah has been able over years to establish significant military infrastructure in civilian homes across this area. And so now the Israelis are committed to destroying what Hezbollah was able to use to threaten civilian Israeli communities in the north. And part of that is taking out the, literally the infrastructure that they used, and they were using homes.
- [17:13]
A
Okay, so about Lebanese government's role in all this. What's the problem? Because my understanding for the 2024 ceasefire through now, as we've discussed, the Lebanese government, the Lebanese armed forces were supposed to fill the vacuum. They were supposed to be a major player here. This was celebrated as a great accomplishment that the Lebanese government and the Lebanese armed forces were gonna be stepping up. It sounds like they haven't. Is this a lack of will? Is this a reflection of continued dysfunction and fracturing within Lebanese society, within Israeli politics in the sense that, like, nobody's in. Or does the Lebanese government and the Lebanese armed forces just not have the capacity? They don't have the capability, Even if they wanted to do something, they are just not properly resourced and organized to deal with Hezbollah.
- [17:55]
B
Okay, so there are a couple of things going on here. The first is that many in Lebanon are still terribly scarred by the Lebanese civil war. So many, many people are very, very wary of taking on Hezbollah, which is Even today, very, very well armed and trained. Since they lost so many Hezbollah senior commanders, the highest level council overseeing their military and terrorist activities. Some of those positions have been taken over by Iranian IRGC officials. And so many in Lebanon are wary of kind of really taking the fight to Hezbollah, fearing that Hezbollah will fight back hard and that'll rekindle the civil war. Because of that, many in the Lebanese armed forces, and the chief of staff, General Haeckel in particular, seem to be of this school, were more committed to deconflicting with Hezbollah than disarming Hezbol. The way they went about doing things was not primarily to challenge Hezbollah and to raid places in an effort, try and seize as much weaponry as possible, but rather to get Hezbollah to move away on its own. And sometimes what they would do is they'd get information through the mechanism from the Israelis saying, there's weapons in this tunnel, there's weapons in this home, there's weapons in this underground bunker. And they would tell Hezbollah, typically through someone in Lebanese armed forces military intelligence, which is believed to be well penetrated by Hezbollah. And, and they'd say, listen, we're going to be there tomorrow. And from their perspective, this was good. Hezbollah would take its weapons away. The weapons would no longer be in southern Lebanon, but they weren't actually seizing the weapons. And Hezbollah then could live to fight another day, move them somewhere else in southern Lebanon or maybe if necessary, north of the litany. But that's not what they were supposed to do. They got a lot of press. They took videos when they actually did seize weapons, and there were some times that they did, but overwhelmingly they didn't. In one well documented case, they were told there were weapons in a particular house and Hezbollah sent a bunch of women to stand outside the house that prevent the Lebanese armed forces from coming in. And the Lebanese armed forces didn't want to challenge them. Meanwhile, through the back door, Hezbollah's taking crates of military gear out. And when that was all done, the women dispersed and the LAF went in, took videos and said, we found nothing. So they were much more interested in deconflicting with Hezbollah and disarming the south without taking on Hezbollah than in actually doing what they were supp under the ceasefire a B they had a resource problem. And I think here we, the United States and other Western allies, if we can get Lebanon to truly agree and commit to do what has to be done, we should be willing to fill in the gap that they have financially for salaries for Lebanese armed forces. There was this wild disagreement between Lebanon And Israel over how many Lebanese soldiers were deployed to the south to enforce the ceasefire. The lebanese said about 8,000. The Israelis said about 4,000. And they were both right. There were about 8,000 soldiers deployed to the south, but at any given time, only about 4,000 were actually acting as soldiers because they weren't getting anywhere near their full salaries. And so in order to put bread on the table at home, half of them had to drive Uber or work in a restaurant or whatever they did to make money. And so there was not 8,000 soldiers deployed and working as soldiers at any given time. It really was 4,000. On top of that, even if they were getting their full salaries, Hezbollah was still paying their operatives about three times as much as a full Lebanese soldier was getting. What they need is to have the salaries. Because, look, if I'm not getting paid, I'm not incentivized to go and put my life on the line fighting Hezbollah. Those are committed, hardened soldiers. I gotta feel there's something in it for me. And I also need to know that my government is behind me and it's gonna continue to be behind me and stick to it. So on the plus side, the government outlawed Hezbollah militant activity in Lebanon. That's unheard of before. On the negative side, there's been no effort to enforce that yet. And so we need to empower the Lebanese armed forces and then hold their feet to the fire with them, understanding that if they don't do the job, the Israelis sure will.
- [21:57]
A
And how deeply embedded is Hezbollah in Lebanese politics and society today?
- [22:01]
B
Well, Hezbollah is part of the social fabric of Lebanon. It's not that they are the only ones representing the SH Lebanon. Nabi Berry was the speaker of Parliament and heads the Amal and others are there. But they are part of the fabric of Lebanese society. And many of their supporters don't trust the government, don't trust anybody else, will also believe that it's just an American Zionist conspiracy that Hezbollah ever did anything bad. But their standing has significantly fallen even within the Shia community, because just twice now within the past few years, Hezbollah has dragged Lebanon into a war that nobody in Lebanon, except for the most hardline people in Hezbol. Hezbollah wanted not only because there was a political crisis until this latest government came into power, but there was and remains a severe economic crisis. It's very hard for Hezbollah to say that it does everything it does out of the best interests of Lebanon and not the best interests of Iran when everyone in Lebanon is saying, don't do it, don't do it, don't start a war with Israel twice in a row. They do exactly that. First on October 8, 2023, and then again now in the recent war with Iran. By the way, one of the things that Hezbollah officials say nowadays about direct talks between Israel and Lebanon, one of the reasons they say that they're against it is because they say there's no national consensus for those talks. And that's just very, very rich, because Hezbollah for years has been making decisions about life and death, war and peace for all of Lebanon, dragging Lebanon into wars Lebanon didn't want. Without national consensus. Hezbollah standing has never been lower. But they still have lots of capabilities. And by the way, they have lots of capabilities to do damage within Lebanon, not just targeting Israelis, but to kill fellow Lebanese who get in their way or make too strong of a stand against them. And that's the other reason why there is some wariness or hesitancy among the political and military elite in Lebanon to fully implement the ceasefire.
- [24:00]
A
And how does Israel's presence in southern Lebanon impact this kind of rationale that Hezbollah establishes for itself in Lebanese politics and society?
- [24:09]
B
Look, ironically, the Israelis are in southern Lebanon because they need to protect the northern communities from the attacks that Hezbollah was carrying out. But being in southern Lebanon, being an occupying force, again, this feeds right into Hezbollah's narrative, is a shot in the arm for their raison d'. Etre. They're not attacking Israel in support of Hamas in an effort to destroy Israel in the moment. No, they're just defending Lebanese territory. And you need the weapons of resistance, as they call themselves, to push Israel back. So as long as Israel is on any territory in Lebanon, we have to be here. I don't think that people in Lebanon buy this narrative because they understand that Hezbollah started this war and they started a the war with Israel just a couple years earlier. But it does resonate with some. And that's why I think it's important from an Israeli perspective to try and get this Lebanese government, which is not in favor of Hezbollah, to empower it to do what has to be done, to reclaim sovereignty, to reclaim monopoly over the use of force, to sideline Hezbollah, which ultimately is a pawn of Iran and not doing things in the best interests of Lebanon. I think there's a shared interest here between the Israeli government and the Lebanese government. The question is, can the Lebanese government, can the Lebanese armed forces be counted on to do the job? And we don't yet have the full answer to that question. And so I think it's worth exploring.
- [25:33]
A
Okay, we hear this term A lot. Hezbollah's unit 121. Why is Hezbollah's unit 121 so prominent in the news? What is it? Why is it such a problem?
- [25:42]
B
Hezbollah's unit 121 is their assassination unit. This is not a unit to assassinate Israelis in Israel or Jews abroad, though they have teams that do those things. Of course, this is an element whose job is to assassinate fellow Lebanese who get in their way. And they've done this many times over the years, including Lebanese Shia intellectuals, Lebanese Sunni politicians, Lebanese journalists. Rafi Kariri himself, the former prime minister. The special tribunal for Lebanon, the UN tribunal that investigated the assassination of Rafi Khariri and a bunch of others found that Unit 121 was led by two very senior Hezbollah operatives. Mustafa Badradin, who was killed in Syria and who was the head of Hezbollah's terrorist wing at the time, who succeeded his late brother in law, Imad Mughnia, who was killed in 2008, and Salim Ayash, who by the way, was a US passport holder and was convicted for his role in overseeing Unit 121's very detailed plot to assassinate Rafi Khariri. So now when you have so many Lebanese actively trying to sideline Hezbollah, you have Hezbollah leaders, senior politicians, senior security folks who have said that be careful what you do or we might have to have a coup and topple this government after the fighting with Israel is done. Basically they're being not so subtle about the idea that they would take the fight to fellow Lebanese if the Lebanese government tries too hard to sideline them.
- [27:21]
A
Okay, so now we've been there. Are these U.S. diplomatic efforts over the past month to reach a real ceasefire, a new ceasefire. What's going on here, like what about these efforts is distinctive from fall of 2024?
- [27:33]
B
The thing that's most distinct about these talks is that they are direct. So first you have talks between Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors here in the United States. First time government officials from Israel and Lebanon have talked directly in several decades. And then we just had the second round of talks in the Oval Office with the President of the United States, with the Vice President of the United States giving their imprimatur to these talks. One Lebanese journalist asking the president, what about the Lebanese law that still makes it illegal for Lebanese to talk to Israelis at all? The president said he was unaware of that. That's going to be repealed. I think that's something that's going to be on the table in the near term. The real question is what can be done? Cooperatively between Israel and Lebanon publicly and not publicly to disarm Hezbollah. Ultimately, it's not Lebanon that is fighting Israel. It's a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. But there's no fire between Israel and Lebanon. The shooting is between Israel and Hezbollah. And Hezbollah, obviously is not party to this talks because they're a terrorist group that's not interested in. Interested in destroying Israel. Remember their open letter in 1985 which first said no negotiations under any circumstance. And so the question is, what can be done to empower Lebanon as a government and the Lebanese armed forces to truly disarm Hezbollah? They are assuming risk, there's no question. But there is a tremendous benefit in asserting sovereignty over your country. This is a country that's suffering from a severe economic crisis. And the only way they're going to get the financial help that they need is if they're able to sideline Hezbollah and then put in place the kind of political reform necessary to be able to have a functioning government. There isn't any territorial dispute between Israel and Lebanon. The territory that Israel is now occupying in southern Lebanon, the security strip, is not something they want to hold onto forever. They're there because they have to be there. And so this is a border that could theoretically be resolved. This is a conflict that could be resolved. The only reason it hasn't is because of Hezbollah.
- [29:40]
A
If Israel were left to its own devices and was not subject to this new diplomatic effort that seems to have been catalyzed by the war with Iran, the most recent war with Iran, would Israel's preference to not be in ceasefire negotiations right now and just be right back at rooting out and degrading as many of Hezbollah's capabilities as possible before they went into talks, like, were these talks forced on Israel and Israel was. Would rather just be taking out the threat.
- [30:07]
B
There are some in Israel who hold that position, and there are others in Israel who say, look, we have done significant damage to Hezbollah, and at the end of the day, you're not going to defeat Hezbollah the way it needs to be defeated, just by fighting them militarily. And we need the government of Lebanon to assert control over its territory, or we're gonna be fighting there forever. And so, because Hezbollah has been so degraded, now there's an opportunity. Because there's a new government in Lebanon that is also anti Hezbollah, there's an opportunity. I think Arab government that's been at war with Israel says, we are willing to sit down at the table with you. Israel should say yes every time. That doesn't mean you Say yes to everything they ask for. But you say yes to that meeting. When the President of the United States says, let's meet in my office, you say yes, and you explore what is possible. So Israel's not going to ever just put its security in someone else's hands and go to sleep. You know, the post October 7th world, it's very, very clear that Israel has got an entirely different perspective on its security. And it is no longer going to sit back and watch as enemies sworn to its destruction accumulate the weapons necessary to act on that threat. But if the Lebanese armed forces can be deployed in the south to reclaim their own territory and to remove the Hezbollah threat from Israel's border, that's something worth exploring.
- [31:24]
A
And the Lebanese government's willingness to sit down directly face to face with Israel's government now, when it has been unwilling to do that forever until now, that's a function of how much Israel has weakened Hezbollah, a function of the leverage that this particular administration, the Trump administration, has in the region. All of the above. Like what's different this time?
- [31:46]
B
Yes, all of the above. You know, Iran has been weakened. Hezbollah has been severely weakened. There's a new government in Lebanon that is overtly anti Hezbollah, that is taking action to constrain Hezbollah's financial activities, that has passed a law, Hezbollah militant activities in the country. And from the government of Lebanon's perspective, it's a question of capability, not intent. I don't think that that's necessarily the case across the board. For example, as I mentioned earlier, I think the chief of staff of the Lebanese Armed Forces has been hesitant to do as much as necessary, as much as he's been asked to do. But I think that there is a real opportunity here. And the President of the United States has made this something that is important to him, to change the reality. Ironically, even the Iranians wanted the ceasefire. The Iranians insisted that in order for there to be a ceasefire in Iran and talks in Pakistan, that that ceasefire had to apply to their proxy in Lebanon. By the way, Iran and Hezbollah for years have been insisting, no, no, no, we're not in close partnership together like that. We just have ideological, you know, religious things in common. But really, Hezbollah is just Lebanese. And that all has been thrown to the wind right now. Again, again, Israel is not going to sit back and allow someone else to say, don't worry, I got this. They're going to watch very, very carefully. And even under this current ceasefire, the Israelis are targeting Hezbollah almost daily, not randomly, but when they see Hezbollah operatives doing things so the other day, the news on Friday, I think it was news, covered an explosion and there was a puff of smoke, and almost every news outlet covered it. You see the Israelis are still carrying out attacks in the context of the ceasefire. And then the Israelis released the drone footage of a bunch of Hezbollah snipers on a roof, roof firing at Israeli soldiers. And that's what they took out. So when the Israelis see Hezbollah doing things they're not supposed to be doing in southern Lebanon, per the ceasefire, they're going to act, and that's going to happen even in the context of the current ceasefire.
- [33:40]
A
Nadav Eyel recently commented on this podcast, before it was becoming conventional wisdom, which is that as it relates to the US Israel war against Iran, against the regime, be mindful of the story the regime is telling itself. And the story the regime was telling itself, or at least factions within the regime like the IR see, is that they have not lost this war. So we may think that the regime is in a very weak position and is isolated. And it may be so obvious to us that Iran is on its. The regime is on its back foot, but that is not the story they're telling themselves. And they have a rationale, at least for now, in terms of why they've been able to hang in there. Would you say the same about Hezbollah? Could the same apply to Hezbollah that they've been beaten down between what Israel did in the summer and fall of 2024, the pager attack, the walkie talkie attack, taking out Nasrallah, taking out huge swaths of Iran's arsenal of rockets and missiles. So to us, it looks like Hezbollah is really on its back foot. But that may not be the story that Hezbollah is telling itself.
- [34:38]
B
There's no question that Hezbollah leaders are telling themselves a similar narrative. The difference here is that Iran is the governing entity still in control in the country. And back home in Lebanon, Hezbollah is facing a very different and difficult political and security situation. It's not just that the Israelis inflicted such damage on Hezbollah's military capabilities, on its political leadership, on its finances, et cetera, et cetera. So the government of Lebanon is doing things against it as well. You know, we were all looking very carefully at the prospect of elections which were supposed to be held in May and are being delayed now, because for Hezbollah, this was the big test. Were they going to lose significant votes? Were they going to lose political allies from some in the Christian community? For example, for Hezbollah, the difference is that there is a different political reality on the ground in Lebanon, a different government has come into power in Lebanon that for the first time is no longer referring to the resistance as part of the governing structure, is no longer referring to the need for this sub national independent militia of Hezbollah to defend against Israel. And that's a sea change for Hezbollah. That's a very different reality. Not one necessarily that leads to their destruction right away, but one that does undermine their standing and that's what they're really wor. It's one of the reasons why I'm so concerned about unit 121. I think Hezbollah is looking not only to strike at Israel when possible, but in the moment, maybe even more so, to strike out against the Lebanese that are very bravely taking on positions against it, including some very brave people within the Shia community, including some who are running against Hezbollah politicians. Because Hezbollah wants to make a very clear statement, I fear, don't mess with us, okay?
- [36:21]
A
A question that comes up that no one really wants to talk about. But you know, you can't help but ask this question or imagine this. Given how things have gone, the reality might be that Israel has to return to maintaining some kind of semi permanent military presence in southern Lebanon like it did in the 80s and 90s. Basically between 1982 and 2000, Israel had some presence. Now, I'm not saying it will be as elaborate and as involved, but the reality is, for all the reasons you stated at the beginning of this conversation about the risks to those communities in northern Israel, there still isn't a really good solution for how life in northern Israel for Israelis gets back to some semblance of normalcy. And the only way to ensure that is for Israel to be back in southern Lebanon, as you said, by the way, not because it has territorial ambition, not because it has some territorial claim, but just because it's the only way to provide basic security to Israel's northern communities.
- [37:17]
B
I don't think that that's necessarily the case. And the reason is, unfortunately, Hezbollah has plenty of capabilities. Israel, without being right there on the border. They have rockets that they have north of the Watani river that are able to hit Israel. Certainly the communities in the north occupying that space doesn't prevent those types of rocket attacks. The question is, at what point does the idf, the Israel Defense Forces, feel confident that they have rooted out enough of Hezbollah's deeply entrenched infrastructure in the communities along the blue line along the border that they feel that there's no longer infrastructure there. The Israelis have all kinds of capabilities to be able to watch what's happening there. And as We've seen even under the context of the current ceasefire, when they see Hezbollah trying to rebuild those capabilities, they have the capability, the Israelis, of hitting them, whether or not they're sitting on the Lebanese side of the border. And so that's the first thing. The second thing is what is the nature of the position that they might feel they need to have in southern Lebanon? I don't think they necessarily are to going going to feel the need to have control over a swath of southern Lebanon. I think they probably could go back at some point to controlling a small number of forward operating bases on these strategic hilltops, giving them forward view into Lebanon, down into the valleys. I think there is an issue about not giving Hezbollah a shot in the arm and a boost to their raison d' etre, that really you need me to fight Israeli occupation. At the end of the day, I would much, much rather see the Lebanese armed forces deploy properly. And when they deploy in areas and do what needs to be done for the Israelis to be able to withdraw from that area, what we then have to deal with. Another thing that is uncomfortable to talk about is what happens to all the Lebanese who have been displaced, because while plenty of Israelis have been displaced from the north, many Lebanese have been displaced now from the south of Lebanon. And so what happens to those people? Where do they go? So that's something that will also have to be addressed because you don't want to create that kind of grievance that Hezbollah could build on from people who lived in the south. I think, though, that there's reason for optimism, cautious optimism to be sure. But the President of the United States has expressed a personal interest in this. He's brought Lebanese and Israeli officials into the Oval Office. He's made it clear he wants this to move forward. And I think that while there is doubt and a lack of trust between Israelis and Lebanese and Lebanese and Israelis, there's enough common ground, including common ground against Hezbollah, to see some area of agreement and movement and for the Israelis to create situations where the Lebanese armed forces are given an opportunity to do something and a test to do something. And let's see what they do from a funding perspective. As I said, I think an easy thing we could do, we and our allies, is fund LAF salaries. But we're done just providing a big chunk of money LAF Lebanese armed forces, as we have in the past, and it should be paid for performance. We should give them a certain number of months worth of salary and say at the end of that time, if you have Performed, we will give you the next few months. And the Lebanese armed forces will complain that it's very difficult to plan when you don't get a full disbursement of funds right away. And our response should be, it is our intention to give you the full disbursement assuming you do the job. Not 100%. I'm not going to insist on certain numbers. I just want to see true performance. Well, I had this meeting and I sent that patrol and I met this many times and I had this many phone calls. Not measures of performance, but measures of effectiveness. How many weapons did you seize? What was done with those weapons? Were you raiding facilities that you describe as private property? Did you raid facilities that were underground, which they have not done sufficiently? They've done it once or twice and given themselves big pats in the back when they have. And that's great. But lots of underground facilities haven't been hit. And by the way, that's kind of important because it's harder for the Israelis to hit those from the air. Have you fully deployed to the Lebanese Syrian border where, despite the fact that there's now a regime in Syria that is also anti Hezbollah, there is still smuggling that is successfully getting through, though the Syrians have stopped some of it. There are clear metrics that we need to be using to measure their effectiveness. And if they actually do what they're supposed to do, we should be funding their salaries and enabling them to do that. And if they actually perform, then the Israelis, the idf, should be willing to pull back, back a little bit and watch them perform there. Because I don't think that over the long term, an Israeli presence in southern Lebanon is going to lead to greater Israeli security. I think it's going to give Hezbollah a shot in the arm. And I think that the Israelis have done such a robust job across the southern sector of Lebanon, just across the border. Again, I've seen it for myself that the nature of the threat just across the border is nowhere near what it was before for.
- [42:06]
A
All right, a little dollop of optimism. We'll take it. Matt, on the Call Me Back podcast, always looking for a little bit of hope. So you know you came through.
- [42:16]
B
I'm here for you. Cautious optimism. It's not trust and verify, it's just verify.
- [42:22]
A
I like that. All right, thanks, Matt.
- [42:25]
B
Dan, it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much.
- [42:36]
A
That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members only show, Inside Call Me Back inside. Call Me Back is where Nadavyal Amit Segal and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arkmedia.org that's Ark Media Call Me Back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Our community manager is Ava Weiner. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor. Sam.