← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
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A
And now another mouthwatering recipe from Maracan, the world's finest rice vinegar. How about a Maracan hot chicken sandwich with tangy slaw and pickled cucumbers? It's bold, crispy and spicy with chili, garlic and bright, tangy notes. The secret? Morakan Genuine Brewed rice Vinegar. It adds a zesty kick that elevates sauces, marinades and homemade condiments. Craving sweet and savory? Try Maracan Seasoned Gourmet Rice Vinegar, a flavor bomb delivering perfectly balanced tastes great for spring vegetables, fresh slaws and grilled proteins. Morakan has crafted premium rice vinegar in Japan since 1649 and brewed in the US for over 50 years. Next time you're at the market, pick up a bottle of Morakan Genuine brewed with a green label or season gourmet with the orange label. Then check out ricevinegar.com for more delicious recipes because the food you love is better with Maracan, the world's finest rice vinegar.
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B
This is a Global Player Original podcast.
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C
I happened to leave Lebanon in the morning. By the time I got back to London, everybody was texting me and talking about, oh my gosh, you got out in time. This will not be resolved on the battlefield.
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B
This conflict in Lebanon is now essentially the spark that can restart the war in the region.
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C
We have had enough of just surviving. This has been going on 60 years. And she said, we just want to live. He spoke to me in a way that most Lebanese told me they had never heard a Lebanese president speak so bluntly.
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B
One assumption that turned out to be correct was that the Iranians are a resilient warrior nation.
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C
The Iranians won't settle for anything unless they believe and they trust that there will not be another war launched on them. So it's really complicated. Really, really, really complicated. And hi everyone. It is the latest episode of the X Files with me, Christiane Amanpour in
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B
London and Jamie Rubin in New York.
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C
So two big questions today. The battle for Lebanon. Does that actually hold the key to resolving the Israel U. S Iran war? And what about the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu? It's getting more and more publicly known. At least Trump is letting it be known that he has differences and he's irritated with something and some of the actions that Bibi Netanyahu takes. So we'll talk about all of that. But first, Lebanon. Jamie I was just there these last few days. I happened to leave Lebanon on Sunday in the morning. By the time I got back to London, everybody was texting me and talking about oh, my gosh, you got out in time. There was another flare up between Israel and Hezbollah, with Israel bombing parts of South Beirut called Dahya, and Iran also getting in on the act, sending a missile towards Israel, Hezbollah firing a missile into northern air. I mean, I don't know how many. I'm just saying a. But it was an exchange between all of them. Now, a lot of diplomacy was exerted probably by President Trump in no uncertain terms, and Iran has now suspended its action. And for the last several hours at least, there have been no further Israeli strikes. But, Jamie, I was really, really not shocked, but it was my first time in Lebanon to hear from the Lebanese people and from the president himself, Joseph Aoun, how much they cannot stand the Islamic Republic of Iran and how much they absolutely want to be a sovereign nation, finally, and that this is about Lebanon and the Lebanese, not about Iran and its proxies and IR using Lebanon as its battlefield, et cetera. So I wasn't shocked, but I was really, really convinced that so many of the people feel that way. It was really interesting, Jamie.
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B
Well, that is interesting. It's, I think, somewhat new, at least in recent, say, year or two, that the Hezbollah factor has changed. For a long time, many Lebanese, as I understand it, and I confess that you may know more about Lebanon than I do, I at least know about it from the diplomatic side a bit. Many Lebanese regarded Hezbollah as their savior for getting the Israelis out of Lebanon. And then there was a time when an agreement had been struck when the first ceasefire was arranged between the Biden administration and the Hezbollah agreed to go north of the Latani River. And there was hope that a new president, president who you chose, who people were very, very pleased. It seemed like Lebanon was coming together to try to do exactly what you said, to let the Lebanon be Lebanon rather than the battleground for the Middle east, the sort of microcosm of the wars of the Middle East. Unfortunately, that's not really possible until Iran and Israel allow that to happen. And right now that's not happening, as you point out.
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C
And again, you know, we often talk sort of 3,000 or 30,000ft up about the big picture and the diplomacy. And you, you can weigh in on some of the past diplomacy, but let's not forget that Hezbollah was formed in 1982 by the Iranians inside Lebanon to deal with the first Israeli invasion of that time in 1982. And so they started to fight and fight and fight against that and stayed and stayed and stayed. And, you know, so many Lebanese say, you know, southern Lebanon is. And the Hezbollah strongholds, that's not even Lebanon. They say that that's little Iran. And so many of the Hezbollah people also have Iranians there and amongst them, and certainly the Iranian influence. I mean, I remember the very, very first time I ever went to Lebanon was in the early 1990s after the first Gulf War. And I was stunned by all the major posters. Now this is 91 ish. All the major posters and banners leading from the airport to the hotel or to our bureau had pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei as well as their leaders, the Hezbollah leaders. I can't remember if it was Hassan Nasrallah back then or his predecessor. Nonetheless, they were the ones who looked, to all intents and purposes to be leading Lebanon because only their big banners were up this time. I also saw a picture of Hassan Nasrallah. He was the Hezbollah chief that Israel assassinated in its last rounds last year. And I also saw Mojtaba Khamenei, the Iranian so called supreme leader who was put into office after his father, the other Khamenei, was assassinated by Israel in the opening hours of the current war. Beautiful.
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B
With the names, Kristen?
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C
Yeah, with the names. But just to say that Iran has a big presence. And I was, I was really taken by the number of people who I spoke to, whether it was my friend who has a fantastic bar. She's a writer, she's a human rights proponent, she's a poet, she's a journalist. Her name is Jumana Haddad. And she said to me me something very poignant. She said, you know what? We have had enough of being resilient. We have had enough of just surviving. This has been going on 60 years, you know, longer than she was born. And she said, we just want to live. We just want to live. And you can understand that. And the latest, you know, all of this has really made the Lebanese people, including a big proportion of those Shiites, want to have a sovereign state and want to actually have a state and not one that is constantly disrupted by a non state actor. No matter how much they're told that this non state actor, Hezbollah, is helping them get rid of their occupier, which is Israel. Israel is occupying right now. It's bombing right now. Those two, unless there's some kind of peace between those 2 With the US helping, this is going to be a very difficult prospect because of course, nobody signs up. Israel doesn't do a peace deal with Hezbollah. They do it, you know, with Iran and they try to do a ceasefire with Iran.
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B
Exactly. And I think you've pointed to what the problem is. The Israelis had a lot of success in the early days of this most recent war in weakening Hezbollah and killing Nasrallah, in damaging many of the Hezbollah units that were deployed. But they haven't figured out that they cannot kill it. And in a way, it's similar to the Iranian regime. The Israelis have done very well in weakening it, but they still think that somehow they can make it go away. And until the Israelis realize that some arrangement has to be made that it's not going to go away and Hezbollah is not going to go away, they may have less popularity in Lebanon, as you point out, because they caused this most recent incursion by choosing to join in with Hamas's attack on Israel. And let's remember, that's how this started. Hezbollah chose to join Hamas in attacking Israel way back on October 7th. Had that not happened, the Northern war would be a different situation. But Hezbollah isn't going away. Israel's clearly not going away. And sooner that all of those involved realize that when you have the situation like this, where you're not going to be able to resolve it on the battlefield, that's when diplomacy is supposed to be effective and when it can be effective. And the Israelis have shown that their force can enhance their diplomacy, but now they need diplomacy, and they really just don't seem to know how to put those two things together. And oddly enough, and we are going to talk about this later, it's Donald Trump who's forcing them to do, because the Iranians are linking the whole package to a calm in Lebanon. And so Donald Trump is exercising pressure on Netanyahu to prevent this war in Lebanon from being the spark that continues the war across the region.
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C
Yeah. So everybody was super surprised. You can imagine that this, at least a few hours of this hot war suddenly restarted after the early April ceasefire. This is the most significant amount of bombardments by all side since then. Now, the Americans didn't get involved in it, but they obviously knew about it. They have their, you know, forces based in all sorts of Israeli headquarters, and they know, they have intelligence, clearly. But I think also what's interesting is what you just said and what I heard from President Aoun. Now, let's just quickly delineate for people. Joseph Aoun is a Catholic. Traditionally, by the way, their system works. It's a Christian who holds the presidency. It's a Sunni Muslim who. Who holds the prime minister position, and it's a Shiite Muslim who is speaker of the Parliament. So the prime minister is somebody who I heard from lots of people, is held in high regard. The speaker of the Parliament is the old Shiite warrior, Nabi Berry. It's a name from the beginning of my career at cnn when I was still a desk assistant, a name that's hard to forget. Unbelievable. So because the government doesn't talk to Hezbollah, they talk to Nabi Berry, speaker of the Parliament, who does talk to Hezbollah and who' obviously the intermediary. So the president said to me that he is really, you know, counting on Nabi Berry to get Hezbollah to understand that this has to end and it has to end fairly. And even the president, who's a military man, he spent 42 years in the military, he was a commander for about eight years. He fought in the Israeli Lebanese wars. And he still carries shrapnel in his body as a reminder, but big reminder, he told me, is that this will not be resolved. The battlefield, it's gone on in various shapes and forms and different configurations for, you know, 60 years or so. Obviously, the Hezbollah Israel war has been going on since the early 80s. But Aoun said, look, although we don't want Iran fighting its battles on our territory, the root cause, as we've heard so many people talk about, the root cause is they have to, you know, remove the Israeli occupation and the destruction of villages and the, you know, destruction of something like 3600 people have been killed in this latest flare up. So there has to be some quid pro quo. And the Iranians and the Hezbollah have to also be brought on board. I spoke to an Iranian official today. It was, I can't reveal all the details because it was an off the record conversation, but just suffice to say nothing new. They say that any ceasefire, as you mentioned, with the United States and any end to the war would have to include an end to the war in Lebanon. And they also say they want nation by nation, good relations with their neighbors, non aggression pacts with their neighbors. They want an end to the war, Jamie. And I think that is something that you and I have talked about. The Iranians won't settle for anything unless they believe and they trust that there will not be another war launched on them.
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B
And that's very difficult for them right now because of the diplomacy that preceded these last rounds of military action. While the diplomacy was going on, the military action began by the United States and Israel. And the Romanians also want, as a test of that seriousness, they want to see some money released And I think when you dig into some of the details there, there's a lot of billions of dollars frozen. It's their own money. It's frozen money from their oil sales that they want to see released as a test of whether this whole thing is going to work. And I think that's been one of the holdups, and I think that's going to be the hardest thing to get done. But, look, everyone we are talking to, everyone we're talking about is recognizing that, that this conflict in Lebanon is now essentially the spark that can restart the war in the region. Donald Trump and the United States clearly don't want that to happen. My impression is that the Iranians don't want that to happen, because when they respond, they're responding in careful ways, signaling things, standing down quickly, but trying to show that Hezbollah is an ally that they will help defend. So that leads you to the. The problem of to what extent the Israelis will comply with the needs of the United States to have this war end. And there I have to get back to the point that the Israelis, again on the right, those pressuring the Israeli leader, seem to somehow think that more military action on the ground is somehow going to resolve the Hezbollah problem. And it just doesn't seem rational to me any longer to keep saying that if we just used a little bit more force, if we just did things a little bit more, if we just stayed a little bit longer, that we would be able to resolve this problem. And instead, they need to get diplomacy in gear. Backed by force. Yes, but diplomacy is the only way.
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C
Backed by the threat of force.
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B
The threat of force, yes, I agree. And that's what the Israelis just seem terrible at. To use the example, President Trump had to finally tell Prime Minister Netanyahu enough is enough in. In Gaza. So that's what's gonna have to happen in Lebanon, too. It's happened a few times. I think we'll talk about that more in a bit. But that's crucial.
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C
Basically, as you know, in Washington, under the Trump auspices, the Lebanese government is sitting down with the Israeli government. Their representatives are sitting there trying to figure out a way forward. But you can imagine President Aoun is under a huge amount of pressure. You know, he agreed to a ceasefire on behalf of his nation, you know, without even really being able to talk, you know, talk for Hezbollah. But then, you know, the Israelis never took it. Bibi Netanyahu never took it to his cabinet or his security group. And so they never signed on to this latest, latest one. And not only that, not only that they killed several Lebanese armed forces, the very people that they're trying to prop up as a counterweight as a sovereign nation. Counterweight to Hezbollah. On top of that, what you mentioned about no win on the battlefield with all its milit military might that Israel has, Hezbollah is playing a asymmetrical game like Ukraine does, like Iran does. And they are using these, what they call FPV drones, the drones that are also guided by fiber optics and very difficult to intercept, etc, and they are doing a huge amount of damage on Israel's ability. You know, it's tanks and it's this and it's. That are being flummoxed by the asymmetrical warfare that Hezbollah is now leaning into. So all of this makes it incredibly difficult. And again, the President is putting himself out. He spoke to me in a way that most Lebanese told me they had never heard a Lebanese president speak. So bluntly, so determined and not only, you know, calling Iran to account. By the way, Jamie, you're going to love this. The Iranian foreign minister I've never seen this, essentially tweeted back about my interview to the President of Lebanon saying, you know, you say we're your problem. Who's occupying, I don't know, a fifth of your country. Who's responsible for the deaths of so many people in your country, who's responsible for making more than a million people flee their homes in southern Beirut? Why don't you concentrate on your real foe, that is Israel. This was his message after our interview. And I'm thinking, well, you know, if Israel does want, you know, a secure northern border, it's got to deal with. Yes.
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B
And that's what you, you, yes, you, you're pointing to. I think you're exactly right. I remember when his name was selected, you know, it was a very complicated process to get all of the different parties in Lebanon to agree to it. It started happening at the end of 2024 and, and I think was finalized in 2025. And people thought, you know, know, this would be a pretty darn good outcome for the Israelis if we could get this. President Aoun, a former military man who understands where the threat from Hezbollah's presence is to Iran, that Iran brings to. To Lebanon. And so Israel sometimes has to recognize that they have certain advantages and use them. And the fact that that President A was willing to do what you said, was willing to call out the Iranians, shows you that he has courage, he has the willingness to stand up. He's willing to use Nabi Barry and others to talk to Hezbollah directly. And so now the United States and Israel need to see the circumstances are as good as they're going to be for a solution that has to come through diplomacy backed by the threat of force. Of course. Yes.
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C
And now I will say as we wrap up, even though many, many people told me they really liked what he said and how strong he was and direct Awun was, there are others who didn't like it. There are others who said they did not approve of what he said. These would be, you know, Lebanese, Muslims, some of them. Anyway, they said, hey, who's standing up for Lebanese against Israel? It's only Hezbollah. It's only Iran. So it's really complicated. Really, really, really complicated. And Lebanon is some 70% Muslim, about 30. The Muslims are divided between Shiites and Sunnis. And then there are a whole bunch of other groups and factions. And the Druze, of course, it's just totally sectarian. And of course, there hasn't been a consensus done in decades. But broadly speaking, that's where the whole thing lands. Let's take a break, Jamie, and when we come back, we're going to dig a little bit deeper into the relationship with Trump and Netanyahu and how it, you know, informs what we're seeing in the Middle east. Because, you know, there's been a lot that Trump has done to suggest that Bibi Netanyahu is not actually following his Pied Piper lead and he doesn't like it. That's when we come back.
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D
Granger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and a room, round corners, lights about to fail, filters ready to clog. H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24, 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [21:59]
A
And now another mouth watering recipe from Maracon, the world's finest rice vinegar. How about a moracan hot chicken sandwich with tangy slaw and pickled cucumbers? It's bold, crispy and spicy with chili, garlic and bright, tangy notes. The secret Morakan genuine brewed rice vinegar. It adds a zesty kick that elevates sauces, marinades and homemade condiments. Craving sweet and savory, try Maracan Seasoned Gourmet Rice Vinegar, a flavor bomb delivering perfectly back balanced taste great for spring vegetables, fresh slaws and grilled proteins. Morakan has crafted premium rice vinegar in Japan since 1649 and brewed in the US for over 50 years. Next time you're at the market, pick up a bottle of Morakan Genuine brewed with a green label or season Gourmet with the orange label. Then check out ricevinegar.com for more delicious recipes because the food you love is better with maracan, the world's finest rice vinegar.
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C
We're back with our second segment and we're going to dive a little bit deeper into the vexed up and down relationship between the Israeli prime minister and the US President. Nothing new here, but in this case, Bibi and Trump, that's a whole nother, you know, pretty dramatic relationship that is sometimes good and sometimes not so good. Jamie, today as we record, President Trump said that he's the one who calls the shots, not Bibi Netanyahu. And Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, should know that he's calling the shots at this time and in this particularly delicate moment because as we know, Trump is having a hard time getting out of this war that he started without really taking on board apparently what many, many people advised him that there would not be no easy war against Iran. And particularly they advised him about the perils of letting Iran use the Strait of Hormuz as leverage. We can get a little bit more into that, but okay, you know, president and prime minister and how they deal with each other on these big issues. There's apparently been an angry phone call between them over the last two weeks or so. All these little things get tossed out into the atmosphere as sort of, you know, signs as to which way things may be going. What, what are you reading from all these signs?
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B
Well, I think there is something there, something important there. President Trump, from the standpoint of most Israelis, is, you know, a strong supporter of Israel and has done things that no other American president has done. Some of the things probably in my opinion, went too far, like moving the embassy to Jerusalem in his last term or in putting in place an ambassador who talks in dramatic ways, Israel and Jews and ends up having to be dis, you know, disavowed and settlers, all sorts of things. He's done many things that Israelis wanted to see happen. And there's no question that this war began when President Trump sat with President Prime Minister Netanyahu and talked about ending once and for all this terrible threat to the world called the Iranian regime. And the Israeli prime minister apparently believing his Intelligence minister thought they really had a chance to end the regime. They thought a quick strike on the leadership would lead to some unraveling. And they had some plans we've talked about in the past for some crazy people as their choices for the new leader. But that was how this all began. And I think President Trump really does feel that he has done something dramatically in Israel's interest by starting this war with Israel, Israel, by weakening the Iranian regime to the extent it has done so. But then, wars are complicated. War changes things. Assumptions can be correct or incorrect. One assumption that turned out to be correct was that the Iranians are a resilient warrior nation. So those giant big ideas were wrong. And as a result, I think President Trump is trying to figure out how to get out of this with the Strait of Hormuz open and the nuclear file at least improved. While President Prime Minister Netanyahu has other
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C
interests, not just Lebanon, there his own personal survival politically and actually as a free person, as an unconvicted person. And there's so many people who say that a lot of this is for many reasons, maybe ideology, maybe his view on security, that he thinks there shouldn't be a ceasefire, that they should, quote, unquote, finish the job. We've now discussed for the last many minutes how it, it won't be possible to finish the job militarily, according to all the experts, military ones as well. But he also absolutely has his own political future, whether he goes to jail or not over these corruption trials, that he should be actually in progress. But he's able to push them off because a war is still on. He's able to push off any internal investigation into to the office of the Prime Minister, as in every single war in Lebanon's history, Sorry, in Israel's history, there's always been a day after, once it's over, there's always been a, you know, an investigation into how it was done, what went right, what went wrong, and he has not allowed that in terms of what happened on October 7th. He's trying to push that away. How realistic do you think it is, Jamie, that even by Netanyahu's excesses and self references that he would try to sabotage any ceasefires to save his own political skin.
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B
Look, Prime Minister Netanyahu has done many, many things that have been frustrating to many people for many, many years for personal interests. There was a pretty credible story that the President was willing to pardon him and his wife wouldn't accept the pardon, and so he stayed in office. Clearly, the investigation has weighed on him and has forced him to put himself in a government with people that he never agreed with, that he knows he never agrees with, that he knows he would get rid of in a second if he could stay in power without it. So I think this is all going to come down to the next election. And I think the people of Israel are going to have to decide whether the personal interests of Bibi Netanyahu, who has shown that it is about himself and he's made these decisions himself, many of them, that these personal decisions, whether it's for criminal avoidance or whether it's to overthrow the regime, which he's always wanted to do in Iran, that these are not in the interest of Israel. I think he's worried about that election, and I think those factors play into this. But in the end, I do believe he will follow what President Trump demands on this subject, because President Trump, if he denounced Netanyahu completely publicly and really did explain a lot of things that he knows, I think that would be the end of Netanyahu's career. And so President Trump has power here and he's going to use it, and that's necessary if we're going to get out of this mess.
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C
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the mess. We've all wondered, how is it possible that the president of the United States and the whole Pentagon planning and all the, you know, ministers and cabinet secretaries who advised the US President and the war planners and all of that, how come they didn't figure out the Strait of Hormuz, you know, chokehold that Iran had? But there's a very interesting article because actually, everybody knew that that was a possibility. It just wasn't taken fully on board. And so I think, I wonder what you make of it, because yes, again, Netanyahu thought the war and convinced Trump that the war could be open over in the first few days, foreign policy and intelligence, former US Analysts and activists and people like that who work for both the Republicans and the Democrats, saying in every single war scenario, when it ever came to the desk of the president of the United States about trying to go against Iran militarily, we always came back to the Strait of Hormuz and realized that it pretty much wasn't a surmountable object.
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B
Well, that story is accurate. Every time I ever heard about scenarios regarding Iran when I was in the government, that this question of them weaponizing their geography by controlling the shipping in and out of the Strait of Hormuz was understood to be the step they would take if they felt under full threat. And if you're going to attack the leadership and go after the leadership, remember, there were wars going on between Iran and Israel during the Biden administration. And one of the things President Biden made sure was off the list was the leadership attacks. And they made an arrangement and the Thaad missile defense system was sent to Israel to help defend Israel. And leadership targets were taken off the list because of the recognition that that would open up a new and potentially insurmountable problem. I mean, we may get the Strait of Hormuz open, but it will never quite be the same in terms of everyone's willingness to rely on these, the straits being open. And that question has now really been given into the hands of the Iranian government in a foolish way, in an unnecessary way. And they are going to use it, and they've used it, and they're going to continue to use it.
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C
And the other thing which we've talked about before, one of the other assumptions, according to this latest analysis, that Trump had, was not just that it'd be over and done and dusted quickly. The war and the Strait of Hormoz wouldn't even be, you know, employed in this way or deployed in this way, but that the allies, if it was closed, Trump thought the NATO and other allies would come and help open him, open it for him. Well, clearly that wasn't going to happen because he didn't bring them in on the war plan to begin with. But here's the thing. What do you, you know, you talked about the peril for Benjamin Netanyahu because of these elections coming up. There's also peril for President Trump. Right. Because of elections coming up and the whole relationship and the carte blanche that most American presidents do give Israel. There's a big change in American political views, mostly on the Democrat side, but also on the Republican side, as well as not wanting to go just following Israel down every rabbit hole or every security thing that it says that it has to do and not giving it weapons without proper accountability, not treating it as a special case in these particular instances. So maybe that that is putting some speed into Netanyahu's calculations.
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B
Absolutely. Look, the US Israel relationship politically will never be the same after this war. It will never be the same after October 7th. And it'll never be the same because of Israel's choices that it's made over the years of how to engage. And they've made those choices. They've made choices that have made them increasingly unpopular and not, not the underdog that they always thought they were, not the democracy, which again, that was the first fight that Netanyahu had with his people was about democracy. So Israel is no longer going to have the carte blanche. The Democratic Party is going to go through severe churning over what its policy should be before the next presidential election. And meanwhile, there is a very strong view inside the Republican Party that came from the Trump wing, led by, you know, lots of these podcaster types like Tucker Carlson who think the Israel's too important in our foreign policy calculations and they should be put aside, not, you know, not forgotten, but just not made as important. And I think this war has brought that to the fore. So, yes, there are some real big political challenges for Israel in ensuring that it has its friend America with it down the road. It's not going to be easy.
- [34:48]
C
And I sort of look further down to the presidential, but I think even the midterms this year are going to be quite pivotal in how Congress views all of this stuff as well. So that could be really important. Just one thing before we go to our recommendations. You are always bigging up Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, as at least a normal neocon. And I can't believe you're saying that after the Iraq war, but nonetheless. But he also, as you remember, was pooh, poohing the idea of the Strait of Hormuz. He told many, many news outlets and press conferences that if Iran did that, it would be economic suicide for them as well. So they definitely wouldn't do it. Ooh, wrong. So, you know, we need to get some competent leadership back, Jamie. We'll take a break and we'll come back with our recommendations.
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D
Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 247 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger. For the ones who get it done,
- [36:13]
A
here's another mouthwatering recipe idea from Morrican, the world's finest rice vinegar. Try a Morrican hot chicken sandwich with pickled cucumbers made with chilies, garlic and the vibrant, zesty flavor of Morrican genuine brewed rice vinegar. Or go sweet and sweet savory with Morakan Seasoned Gourmet, a flavor bomb for veggies and grilled proteins. Get the green label for genuine brewed or the orange label for seasoned gourmet. Then check out ricevinegar.com for more delicious recipes because the food you love is better with Morican.
- [36:50]
C
Right, we're back. This is recommendations time. Jamie, you go first.
- [36:54]
B
Well, there was a time when I first met you when you were the TV correspond in Bosnia in Sarajevo. And there was a very famous New York Times correspondent named John Burns. And the combination of your work and his work really did bring to light to the world what was going on in a country. And there's a woman columnist named Lydia Polgreen for the New York Times and she's written she must have spent about a month or so in Lebanon around the time. I'm finding that interesting that both of you were there. It's a very long piece in the weekend section of the New York Times and I think it brings to light a lot of the points you were making and is worth a good read. And then I want to do one shout out to a young correspondent for Air Force magazine named Chris Gordon who discovered that the Obed air base in in Qatar was destroyed by this war and that it hasn't been used. Yep, destroyed is probably too strong a word. Was severely damaged and nobody talked about it, nobody mentioned it. The Iranians attacked it and it's now not usable. And that famous air base in Qatar that everybody went and visited, the air operations center was severely destroyed by the Israelis and it wasn't really discussed. And Mr. Gordon put it in Air Force magazine. So anyone who wants to read about the story, it's a very, very interesting story about that the Iranian attack and the fact that we didn't know about it.
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C
Well, I, I want to endorse that recommendation of yours because basically, as you know from the Pentagon under Hegseth, everything's been rosy. We've destroy this, that and the other. Do you reminisce? And yes, they never ever talked about the big damage. I remember hearing bits and pieces about how the damage to American bases in that region was much bigger. And this is really interesting to actually have the evidence from Chris Gordon and Obaid is, as you said in Qatar, it's the biggest US Air base in the entire region and the most modern and the most up to date and the most important in that region. So very interesting. So what I want to do is also end with Lebanon because I was really struck. I've been several times, but I hadn't been in a long time, probably about nine years and I was at the American University of Beirut, principally for the graduation ceremony. And I was just struck by what an incredible nation of people. The human resources of the ordinary people in Lebanon remind me of those in Iran. They are highly educated, highly, you know, advanced in so many, many fields of endeavor. The American University of Beirut brings in people from every single part of the sectarian divide and is one of the best universities obviously not just in Lebanon, but in the whole region. It was also an instrument of really deep American and Lebanese soft power. And it's an oasis in that war torn country, in that war torn region for critical thinking, thinking, freeing the mind developing, you know, all the scientists and the, you know, the, the human, what is it called? The arts and scientists, the engineers, the doctors. It was an incredible thing to watch that graduation, including many, many young women. It seemed like very, you know, slightly there were more young women who graduated than men. And that's happening in Iran as well. And many of them wearing head scarves, not in full abayas or chardors, but wearing head scar. Conservative Lebanese women. And yet there they were with their high heels and their jewelry and they went up to, you know, accept their degrees with great, great pride. And I just think it's so important to remember. So I just want my recommendation to be the aub's archaeological museum. I got a tour of it. Go to YouTube, find the beautiful video that they created when they put back together again shard by shard, with some help from experts from around the world. But the students and the director of the, of the museum, Dr. Nadine Panayot, an amazing woman, put that glassware that, you know, dated back thousands of years and all the other things that were damaged back together again. The idea that all these people from different faiths and sectarian divides came together and helped put it all back together was a very powerful symbol for me, a very powerful message. It was a remarkable thing. So go look on YouTube for that video and if I can find the actual name of it, I will put it on our, on our social media that you can look at. It was great. So listen, Jamie, that was a long way of saying Lebanon is worth saving and the people deserve to live and not just survive. And they would be an engine for that whole, whole region. That's it for this episode. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. You know, you can listen on globalplayer.com and you can always watch on our YouTube channel. Just look for it and find Christiana Monport presents the X Files. And don't forget, our next episode will be our Q and A episode that drops on Thursday. You can always ask us questions by emailing or contacting us on all the social media platforms and on our show email. So for the moment, goodbye from London
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and goodbye from New York. This has been a global player Original
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