Jeremy Scahill

But Sagar, I think the bigger issue, and I think this is going to be the center of the whole ballgame, is going to be Lebanon.

Israel, the defense minister and others are saying we aren't bound by this agreement.

This is going to be a real test of if Trump actually wants this deal.

Because if the Israelis continue their siege on Lebanon, the Iranians have shown quite clearly that at least right now,

They are not going to sit on their hands.

They're saying they didn't strike for the reason that you said, because they got capitulations from Trump at the 11th hour and they wouldn't have done it otherwise.

I think that there's real risk for Iran here.

There's a ferocious internal debate.

People were calling for the head of Ghalibaf and Arachi, saying that this is a bad deal for Iran.

And the center of that is they feel that Iran has more strategic leverage over the United States than it's had in many, many years.

The concern is that if Iran gives up too much and gets bogged down in a process without comprehensive sanctions relief, the Iranian economy continues to suffer.

The Israelis escalate their covert Mossad operations inside of Iran, and Iran's rally around the flag effect starts to diminish.

That's a real concern that we're hearing from some Iranians who oppose this deal.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's clear, and that's been the policy for a long time, but I think they're going to really escalate those efforts.

I mean, Crystal, there's something else interesting here, which is that Iranian officials and analysts that I've been talking to, not just government officials, believe that there is going to be another war, and it's going to be between Iran and Israel.

And they said that the focus right now is the issue of decoupling.

The Israelis and the United States are trying to decouple Hezbollah from Iran.

Trump now has gone in a bit of a different direction because of this reported concession to the Iranians.

We'll see how that plays out.

And they've enlisted the Lebanese government in this parallel so-called peace process, and they're trying to get the Lebanese army to serve as the kind of domestic enforcer of the campaign to break Hezbollah.