Dov Waxman

Lebanon and Hezbollah, he's going to be independent from Trump and he's going to do what he thinks is in Israel's best interest and the hope, which I think is a futile hope, that somehow, you know, another military offensive against Hezbollah will lead to that group's disarmament in Lebanon, which is, I think, an unlikely outcome.

He could.

I mean, the question of whether President Trump will allow him to do that is a big question.

The Iranians want to tie a ceasefire with...

the United States to a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

They want to link these two wars.

And the Trump administration and certainly the Israeli government have tried to resist that linkage and tried to say these are two separate things.

But I think much is going to depend on Trump.

It's obviously notoriously hard to predict as to whether Trump

will basically call upon Netanyahu to stop the attacks in southern Lebanon in order to reach a peace agreement or some kind of a ceasefire agreement with Iran.

If Trump makes that demand, then I think Netanyahu will have no choice but to comply with it.

But if Netanyahu does, and if he's forced to accept a ceasefire in Lebanon, then that is going to be bad news for him politically with the upcoming election in mind.

Yeah, I think, you know, he's made a lot of promises to Israelis over the last couple of years.

promising to restore their sense of security after the disaster of October 7th.

He promised to decisively defeat Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

He promised that he would defeat Hezbollah.

And he also said that he would ensure that Iran wouldn't have a nuclear program.

And not only has he failed, but this has come at great cost, of course, to the Israeli public.

I mean, they've endured very serious airstrikes and attacks from Iran.

attacks from Hezbollah and Israeli soldiers are dying on a regular basis from drone attacks from Hezbollah.