00:00What do you think? Were these talks always doomed to fail? As Mr. Dawood is saying there,
00:06is this just a reality check? Are the gaps unbridgeable?
00:10Well, I think they were unbridgeable in the sense that Israel was putting forward demands that
00:16Lebanon could never accept. And if the Lebanese government would have accepted the Israeli
00:22demands, you would have a scenario very similar to that in 1983, when Israel together with the
00:29United States forced a highly inequitable peace agreement down the Lebanese government's throat.
00:36And this led to a popular uprising in Lebanon, as a result of which that agreement was abrogated.
00:44What I think has happened now is somewhat different. You have this U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Lebanese
00:53diplomatic track that was, again, for those reasons, going nowhere, but has now been overtaken
01:01by the U.S.-Iranian track. And the so-called ceasefire of November 2024, which never materialized
01:12because Israel continued with its aggression against Lebanon on a daily basis, has now been
01:18overtaken by this so-called deconfliction cell that includes, I believe, the United States, Iran,
01:25Pakistan, and Qatar. And I think, you know, all the relevant parties have come to the realization
01:32that unless Israel is restrained by the U.S., there can be no ceasefire in Lebanon. There will be no
01:41Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. And therefore, there won't be a resumption of security or stability
01:48in the Middle East. We should also understand, you know, Israeli leaders, including the defense
01:54minister, were quite open today. They have absolutely no intention of withdrawing from Lebanon under any
02:00circumstances. They want to retain a buffer zone in Lebanon, just as they established in Syria after
02:07the ouster of the Assad regime. And this reflects Israel's new national security strategy. And
02:13therefore, unless Israel is forcefully restrained from implementing its policies in Lebanon and
02:21elsewhere, the Middle East is heading towards an explosion, particularly in a context in which
02:28Israel is seeking to use Lebanon to seek to derail and sabotage U.S.-Iranian diplomacy, not because
02:36are worried about a bad agreement, but because they reject any U.S.-Iranian diplomatic engagement as a
02:42matter of principle and are opposed to any U.S.-Iranian agreement as a matter of principle.
Comments