Matt Frei

speaker

718 appearances 13 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 17 Aug

Matt Frei’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 6.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Claire Byrne Show · We get the latest on the war in the Middle East · 24 Apr 2026 podcast

But of course, as I said before, the truly alien and disturbing factor in all this is what do the Iranians want?

I mean, Hezbollah is the most important part of their so-called ring of fire, which has been massively depleted thanks to the Israelis and the Americans.

But it's still there and they're still firing rockets as they did only yesterday.

And I can't imagine that Iran would want to give that up easily.

I can't imagine that Hezbollah would cut ties with Tehran.

you know, as quickly as the Americans and the Lebanese would like them to.

So I think this whole thing is very fragile indeed.

And remember, the danger hovering over all of this, which was not mentioned yesterday, is civil war within Lebanon.

And I mean, the first time I covered the Middle East in the late 1980s, that's how old I am.

I was based in Israel, but I did a lot of covering of the Lebanese civil war, which was absolutely brutal and tore the country to pieces.

So that specter still hovers over the whole thing.

And then coming to the Iran conflict, I see Donald Trump saying that there is confusion and infighting at the top of the Iranian regime now.

And that's why we have this stalemate.

They're crippled because nobody is in charge.

The other theory is that the hardliners in Iran are now taking over because, I mean...

We can guess whether those who were there previously were more amenable to American approaches or not.

But right now, because of what has happened, you have these hardliners saying stick in, fight and reject diplomacy.

So which do you think is the more likely scenario?

Well, I think, I mean, Donald Trump is right when he says there's infighting in the Iranian regime, as far as we can tell.

We're not there on the ground.

Showing 601–620 of 718 · page 31 of 36