00:00I'm joined now by a war correspondent and political risk analyst, Elijah Magner.
00:04Elijah, I want to pick up on what Jonathan was just saying to us
00:07and start with a look at the situation between Israel and Lebanon, or Israel and Hezbollah rather.
00:13He suggests that possibly the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu,
00:18might actually say, well, yes, the ceasefire is in effect over.
00:23How much do you think events in Israel and between Israel and Hezbollah
00:28could impact what's going on in Iran?
00:31Because we know that Iran has always said any peace deal has to include Lebanon.
00:38Well, what your correspondent said, that the children and students on the borders with Lebanon
00:46are studying from home online.
00:50The students in Lebanon have their homes and schools completely destroyed.
00:55There are internally displays.
00:59There are more than 1.3 million inhabitants,
01:03indicating that there is actually no ceasefire at all.
01:08This is what Benjamin Netanyahu calls as a freedom of action.
01:12And for Iran, this is really non-negotiable.
01:16When the Iranians said that there is no deal or no MOU or memory or any draft or framework
01:26can be agreed upon if the war in Lebanon continues.
01:32And for them, the war in Lebanon continues.
01:35It doesn't mean a free hand for Israel to continue bombing the south of Lebanon,
01:40destroying villages, and in the last few hours, they even pushed more forces beyond the line
01:47that they call defense line, which is more or less a thousand square kilometers
01:53in the Lebanese territory and water.
01:57And then if we look at what's been happening between Iran and the U.S. in the last 24 hours,
02:03how do you understand the messaging coming from both sides?
02:06Marco Rubio talking about choosing the right words.
02:09They could be just days away.
02:10Iran saying it has a right to retaliate.
02:13Are they at all on the same page?
02:15Do you have any hope that they might make a breakthrough?
02:18Well, the latest strikes are a reminder that the ceasefire was never a real peace agreement,
02:25but a very fragile pause between two sides that still fundamentally distrust to each other.
02:32So the prepared U.S.-Iran framework was designed mainly to freeze escalation temporarily,
02:40especially around the state of Hormuz, while postponing the core dispute to later negotiations,
02:46because those deeper issues remain unresolved.
02:50Every military incident risk undermining confidence and pushing both sides back toward confrontation
02:57that both sides are trying to avoid.
03:00And still, even when they fight one another at a very small incident,
03:06they call it incident and they say, well, the ceasefire is still in place
03:10because actually renewing confrontation is not in the advantage of both sides at the moment.
03:16Thank you so much for speaking to us.
03:18That's war correspondent and political risk analyst Elijah Magna.
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