00:00On that point of the U.S.-Iran war, Pope Leo has welcomed the initial agreement that was
00:05electronically signed last night and is set to be officially sealed tomorrow in Lausanne,
00:10Switzerland. Lebanon, though, remains outside the scope of the deal. For more, we can bring
00:14in now General Ben Hodges, who's served as the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Europe.
00:18Good morning, General. Always great to have you with us on the programme.
00:21Curious to hear your thoughts on this deal. Is anyone in Washington satisfied with it?
00:26Well, I think the president probably is because it's going to, it gives him some reason to claim
00:34what he has done and to hopefully put it in the rearview mirror, which were his words.
00:40I don't think anybody else believes that this is a good deal or sustainable or one that's going to last.
00:48NATO defence ministers, they're breathing a slight sigh of relief, as our correspondent reported just
00:52earlier. What's the biggest red flag, though, in the draft that you have seen?
00:57Well, you just touched on it. Lebanon is left outside of it. And, you know, the Israeli objectives
01:05for this war have not always been aligned with the U.S. objectives for the war. And the Iranians can
01:11see
01:11that. And so the fact that Israel and Lebanon are not in the deal means that the potential for Israel
01:22and the Hezbollah to resume fighting is really high. I think that's one thing. The second thing,
01:29the Iranians will always be able to stop traffic through the strait again. They've discovered that
01:35they have their own nuclear weapon and there's not much we can do about it. So we're in a much
01:42worse situation now than we were four or five months ago. And what if this collapses then? What's
01:48next? Well, the president said if the Iranians don't behave, then he'll resume bombing. I think this
01:55is, he said that to threaten the Iranians, but of course he will not want to do that right in
02:02the
02:02last five months before the midterm election. So the Iranians actually are the ones that have so
02:07much leverage right now. The Navy, the Navy, the U.S. Navy has done a great job carrying out their
02:14assigned tasks. They could come back in and put the blockade back in, I guess. But this is, this is
02:20exactly the thing that candidate Trump said he would not do. And now here we are. It's a mess of
02:26his own
02:26making. And our allies are correct to be cautious about getting sucked into this. But I would imagine
02:33there is some relief, at least temporarily, because people are concerned about the NATO summit coming up
02:39in just a few weeks and they're hoping that the president doesn't blow that up. Indeed, Ben Hodges,
02:44temporary relief. I think that's a good way of putting it. Thank you so much for joining us here on
02:49the
02:49program.
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