Uh, what, what effect could these strikes have on the current ceasefire?

Well, the problem the Lebanese government has is that they don't actually have a lot of agency in this conflict because Hezbollah outright rejects, uh, this track of negotiations, says that it's completely futile and that Israel is not actually committed to them, and says that Lebanon should instead place its faith in Hezbollah's patron, Iran, uh, to secure a genuine ceasefire and Israeli troop withdrawal as part of its, uh, ongoing negotiations with the US.

Uh, for its part, Israel has, uh, nominally signed up to these talks and has said that it's committed to the ceasefire.

But in practice, I mean, yesterday is just the most egregious example of Israel continuing to violate the agreement and continue to attack Lebanon despite having entered these negotiations.

The problem for Lebanon's leaders is that they don't have the effective capacity to bring Hezbollah to heel, because Hezbollah, uh, is still a very powerful, uh, militant organization, and Lebanon's leaders fear taking steps such as deploying the Lebanese army to confront Hezbollah because it could cause all sorts of, uh, domestic strife and, and violence inside Lebanon.

So while Lebanon's leaders want to take control of this situation as much as they can and not rely on Iran, uh, to intervene on Lebanon's behalf, in practice, they don't really have many effective cards to bring to the table in their negotiations with Israel.

David, just finally, what do we know about Hezbollah's military capability at the moment? It's been hit hard over the past couple of years by Israel.

For sure, and, uh, Hezbollah is clearly not the Hezbollah that it was, uh, before the seventh of October, twenty twenty-three, when this cycle of warfare first broke out.

What is the situation on the ground currently?

Thanks, Chris.

So what we've seen in the past couple of weeks since Israel and Lebanon agreed a framework agreement, um, as part of direct negotiations, is a reduction in the intensity of hostilities in Southern Lebanon, but not a genuine ceasefire.

So the practical implication of that is that Israel continues to refuse to end its, um, occupation of large swathes of Southern Lebanon.

It continues to systematically demolish, uh, communities in these occupied territories.

Uh, and it's also carrying out, uh, persistent lethal strikes, um, which have killed dozens of people, uh, in the past few weeks.

So while the situation, on the face of it, is not as bad as it was, uh, at the height of the war, um, s- so going back to March until mid-June, uh, we still are seeing that the conflict remains ongoing.

But how strong is Joseph Aoun, the president himself, as he visits the US right now? How would you characterize his level of control of Lebanon, given that Israel, of course, will say they are fighting Hezbollah?

The, the, the, the presence of Israel in so many countries is absolutely unprecedented when it comes to issues of borders and nationhood.

Exactly.

And I think what we're witnessing now is still, uh, Israel's new direction in terms of its, uh, security priorities, as it terms it, post the 7th of, uh, October attacks, and that is that Israel more than ever now, uh, insists that its neighbors either enter into peace agreements with it, such as Egypt and Jordan, or, uh, that its other neighbors ensure that, uh, any enemies of Israel are kept at a, a large physical distance from the country.

Uh, so as you mentioned, in Syria, there is, uh, an Israeli occupation in the country's south in a security zone, uh, until it can be sure that there will be no attacks originating from Syria.

And of course, the same is happening now in Lebanon where, uh, Israel insists that up to the so-called yellow line that it's created in Southern Lebanon, that its troops will not be leaving until Hezbollah is disarmed.

Uh, but the problem of course is that the Lebanese government does not actually have the capacity to deliver on that undertaking because it does not have either the military capacity or suffi- sufficient political support within Lebanon to force Hezbollah to stand down and disarm, uh, given that this could only lead to, uh, disastrous consequences within Lebanon and potentially widespread violence.

That, that creates a, a very uncertain situation, doesn't it?

it?Absolutely.

forever.David, is there any other way in which the US can press practically for some kind of peaceful resolution in Lebanon? Apart from the rhetoric toward Netanyahu and expressing their displeasure, i- are there practical steps that can be taken by Washington, for example, to try and bring Lebanon closer to some kind of a sustained peace?

Uh, recently at the start of June, uh, Lebanon and Israel reached a ceasefire proposal, uh, which neither country formally approved in the end, but the, the draft remains there.

And this proposal contemplated what looked like a pretty pragmatic way to, uh, at least start to work towards addressing the fundamental conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and, and to implement an actual ceasefire.

And the, the two main elements of this agreement were that first, the parties would actually cease their fire, which might seem like a, like a very simple step, but as discussed, this has been very difficult to achieve in the past in Lebanon.

But secondly, that Israel would withdraw gradually, uh, through the mechanism of, of what it described as pilot zones, which is where Israel would withdraw from certain occupied parts of southern Lebanon, allow the Lebanese army to come in and to assert control there to the exclusion of Hezbollah and other armed groups.

And, and I think that that is something that the Trump administration can make work politically in the sense that it's not demanding what I think all Lebanese want, which is an immediate Israeli withdrawal, but it's something pragmatic that Washington can really push Israel to abide by.

Uh, in terms of, uh, to your, to your question, Kylie, maybe you were implying or implicit in your question was are there more coercive measures that the US can take in relation to Israel? I mean, in theory, of course.

Is there an expectation by the Lebanese government that this should be something that's being discussed in these peace talks with Israel?

How much is this a growing problem now?

So I think we need to be clear-eyed about the kinds of leverage that work on the Netanyahu government.

And over the past two and a half years, since this conflict began obviously in Gaza and spread to other parts of the region, it's clear that the United States alone has the necessary leverage to restrain Israel's military actions in the region.

I think it's also worth noting that while there are growing voices in Israel suggesting that the government's plans, militarily speaking, in Lebanon make less and less sense, there is still widespread support for continuing to strike Hezbollah.

So in that sense, while the way that Netanyahu is prosecuting the war right now in Lebanon has... drawn criticism inside israel the general principle of attacking hezbollah and continuing to operate in lebanon still meets with widespread public approval and indeed there are some in israel who argue that netanyahu's government is not going hard enough and shouldn't be entering ceasefire agreements but should in fact be continuing to escalate against hezbollah to force the group to stand down The reality, of course, is that just as has been the case with Hamas in Gaza, it is inconceivable that Hezbollah would be disarmed by force by Israel by using violence alone.

And rather, Israel needs to find a way to switch from its military achievements against Hezbollah and convert them into sustainable political gains secured through diplomacy.

And just looking at the wider picture now, because Iran is the great backer of Hezbollah, the fact that Hezbollah has turned down any ceasefire agreement, what does that now mean for the conflict between the US, Israel and Iran?

So Hezbollah and Iran work very closely together, particularly during this current conflict.

The fact that the US State Department is not just going after Hezbollah here, but also members of state institutions, the Lebanese military, the General Security Directorate, which oversees borders here, what is the message that they're trying to send, do you think?

So I think the message is very clear, and, uh, the United States, obviously in coordination with Israel, is using this latest announcement of sanctions as a way to further turn up the heat on, uh, the Lebanese state to take firmer action on Hezbollah.

So it is true that the, the Lebanese president, uh, when he was elected at the start of 2025, uh, and also the new prime minister of Lebanon, uh, committed to implementing a state monopoly over arms.

Uh, and of course, that includes the disarmament of Hezbollah.

However, up until now, uh, Lebanon's political leaders have been cautious and tried to attract Hezbollah's compliance and cooperation with disarmament rather than resorting to force and, you know, in particular deploying, potentially, the Lebanese army, uh, against Hezbollah to force it to surrender its weapons.

Now, uh, as this, uh, situation has developed, we've seen that the US has now taken, as far as I'm aware, an unprecedented step of sanctioning not just Hezbollah officials or officials associated with, uh, Harakat Amal, the main, uh, ally of, uh, Hezbollah within Lebanese political system, uh, but, but also sanctioning Lebanese security officers who are in active service.

And while the US has justified this as saying that these, uh, particular officers are actually, their ultimate allegiance lies with Hezbollah and not with the Lebanese state, uh, it has two key problems.

David, do you agree that splitting the military in this way risks also splitting it along sectarian lines?

What do we know about its capability to continue fighting?

So I think that after the previous war from 2023 to 2024, when Hezbollah suffered huge losses, not just in terms of its leadership, but also to its rank and file and, and to weapons caches that it had stored around Lebanon, many people believed that Hezbollah had been weakened virtually beyond repair.

But since this latest war got underway on the 2nd of March this year, Hezbollah really has surprised a lot of people with the stubborn resistance that it's put up.

So on the one hand, given that it's returned to really its roots from when it came up in Lebanese civil war as an organization using guerrilla warfare tactics, the fact that Israel has entered so far into Lebanese ter- territory kind of suits that sort of asymmetrical warfare, uh, something that it's been very good at for a long time.

But certainly, the days of, uh, Israel being concerned about Hezbollah as a threat, uh, capable of launching heavy missiles into major Israeli cities and, and destroying entire buildings, for example, these kinds of fears seem far more remote than they might have even just two or three years ago, and Hezbollah really has needed to focus back on small scale asymmetrical warfare against a, uh, an, an opponent in Israel with greater, you know, uh, military superiority.

Do you expect much progress?

So the problem here I think is that it's unclear at this point whether Israel is truly committed to the process and whether Lebanon can actually deliver on the sorts of promises it would need to make to push that process forward.

What I mean by that is that I think the major reason that Israel's agreed to this negotiation track is because US President Donald Trump personally insisted that it do so.

If you ever need to get hold of him, he is more often than not sitting on the press bench in a courtroom somewhere.

His parents were sitting in front of the glass-fronted dock.

They were holding hands.

The clerk read out the charge.

It was arson without intent to endanger life.

And he entered a guilty plea.

and his mother tilted her head back and wept in front of the dock.

Today the MP for the area said this mustn't be allowed to become the new normal.

Who has though? Because I mean people, a lot of people say, "Well, obviously Nigel Farage has got the solutions because he would be very hard-line on immigration, both on legal and illegal." Um, but he, he's untested in this, but until th- until, I mean, if he won an election, w- we would see the color of his money, I guess.

Yes, well I, I think there's more that can be done.

I mean, the ultimate solution which of course is extremely difficult politically in all fairness is for the French to agree to take all those back who cross the channel, um, and there'll be ways of doing that.

Then of course if, uh, if every migrant as they got across the channel or, or intercepted mid-channel was taken back to Calais, uh, they would soon stop paying organized criminals to do it, um, so then criminals will then diversify and try and do other things of course, but that's the ultimate solution, but, um, I, you know, I accept that's enormously politically difficult for the French.

But if you think about France, they've got encampments in the thousands of migrants, uh, around Calais and along the French coast which is very unpopular with local residents.

There's crime associated, very minor crime, serious crime.

There's, you know, defecating places and things like that.

I know you're not a politician but do, do you think that over the next three or four years th- this is going to become the major subject of debate before the next election? Because I, I would argue that if it is, that can only help Nigel Farage and Reform UK.