Jeremy Scahill

And that has all kinds of complicated issues attached to it because of the diversity of Lebanon, the way the system is structured, and the popularity of the resistance right now, particularly among the Shia population of Lebanon.

From the Iranian position, and I was told this by an Iranian official in addition to Iranian analysts, the Iranians want to try to accentuate the divisions between the United States and Israel on Lebanon.

And they have no illusions that Donald Trump has been this immense backer of these genocidal scorched earth wars.

They're clear on that.

But they also are very savvy students of American politics, and they understand that there's divisions within the Republican Party.

They understand that Israel is increasingly becoming a toxic issue on the right in the United States, that it's going to play a role in the midterm elections, that Netanyahu is going to face reelection, and that he's being attacked from the right, saying, you didn't

finish these wars, that Hamas still is in power in their section of Gaza, that Hezbollah is still killing Israeli soldiers, including with these very cheaply made FPV drones, that the Iranian government is still firmly in place.

And there's actually a Khamenei who is the supreme leader of Iran.

And so I do think that it's not just the loonies like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, but I think the mainstream of Israeli political power

wants to continue this war against Lebanon.

And the wild card here is what happens when it comes up against Trump's public projections.

But at the end of the day, no one trusts the Americans.

No one trusts Trump.

The Iranians are not stupid.

In fact, their delegation often is flush with PhDs when ours is flush with last weekend's golf scores.

Right.

Yeah, I mean it's – and we've been talking about this on the show and elsewhere before, that it's been really clear over the past few years that it's not, as Bernie Sanders says, the extremist right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is at the core of mainstream political life now in Israel.

And in some ways, it is reminiscent of the posture of many top Democrats in the United States where they're sort of egging Trump on and they're sort of using the taco line that Trump always chickens out.

And they're trying to sort of make it more, you know, make Trump more aggressive or sort of attack him from the position of you failed to achieve these objectives and the regime is being left in power.