00:00David, I want to pick you up on something that Dan Williams, my colleague, just mentioned,
00:05which is the fact that Israel attests that the Lebanese government were not able to rein in Hezbollah.
00:11And I myself, I had many interviews with Lebanese government officials.
00:15They said that they were implementing the Lebanese army's plan to disarm Hezbollah.
00:19They say that they had succeeded south of the Litani River.
00:23But of course, we have found out in the last couple of weeks that that has not been the case
00:28because Hezbollah had indeed been capable of rearming.
00:32Why did the Lebanese government not succeed at reining in Hezbollah?
00:40So, Jumana, I think the Lebanese government, ever since the ceasefire agreement with Israel in November 2024,
00:47has been trying to walk a delicate and dangerous tightrope,
00:52which is, on the one hand, trying to implement its obligations under the ceasefire.
00:57But on the other, not wanting to provoke civil strife by aggressively confronting Hezbollah.
01:04So what this has meant is that as time went by, the government was trying to attract Hezbollah's cooperation
01:10with the disarmament process, which was required under the November 2024 ceasefire deal.
01:16But, as you say, in reality, Hezbollah was complying only up to a point and, in fact,
01:23was using this period to rearm itself in contravention of the agreement's terms.
01:28At the same time, it's worth noting that Israel itself didn't respect the terms of the ceasefire deal
01:32and conducted near-daily attacks on Lebanon during the ceasefire period and continued to occupy several points in southern Lebanon.
01:38So while it's understandable that there is concern that the Lebanese government cannot, in fact, reign in Hezbollah,
01:47and that is accurate, there are cogent reasons for this.
01:50And I can give you the main question people will ask is,
01:54why doesn't the Lebanese government just send the army to confront Hezbollah and force it to stand down?
01:59And there are two reasons that it can't do that.
02:02Number one is that Hezbollah is showing on the battlefield right now that it can put up a fight against
02:08the might of the Israeli defence forces.
02:10Therefore, Lebanon's under-equipped army would face an incredibly perilous situation trying to confront Hezbollah right now.
02:15And the other is a long-running fear, which is well-founded, that if the Lebanese army goes to confront
02:22Hezbollah,
02:22the army itself could split because many of the Lebanese Shia officers and soldiers in the army might desert or
02:30even defect to fight alongside Hezbollah.
02:35Interesting.
02:36David, how do you read the Lebanese government's decision yesterday to expel the Iranian ambassador?
02:44So this is exactly the kind of decision that is significant, but would have been momentous if it had been
02:51made before the current escalation.
02:53So we have known that for decades now, Iran has had an outsized influence over Lebanon's domestic affairs,
03:01first and foremost through its direct support for Hezbollah, its proxy ally.
03:06However, I mean, as your correspondent was pointing out before, I think there's a perception in Israel that this kind
03:11of decision comes as too little too late.
03:15So on the one hand, you have Israeli leaders coming out yesterday and welcoming the Lebanese government's decision.
03:21And then in the same evening, you have Israel's defence minister saying openly that Israel plans to occupy Lebanese territory
03:29up to the Litani River,
03:30which is, as your correspondent was saying, 10% of Lebanese territory.
03:35So I think at this point, Beirut can continue to try to make these efforts to convince Israel, the United
03:44States and the Lebanese people that it's trying to take action on Hezbollah.
03:48But it will need to ultimately demonstrate that it can do two key things.
03:54One is to force Hezbollah to stand down.
03:57And two is to force Hezbollah to surrender its weapons.
04:00And as matters stand, it cannot satisfy either of those tasks.
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