Mike Baker

for these first round of discussions because look what's happening in Lebanon, and that violates one of the first bullet points in this ceasefire or agreement or deal or whatever we want to refer to it as.

Talk to me about where we are right now.

All right.

Well, and I think it's going back to the original discussions, right, ahead of the signing of this agreement or deal or ceasefire.

I'm still confused over what we call it.

There was obviously there was this push by Iran to insist Lebanon has to be part of this deal.

Now, you could be, you know, if you look at the Iranian regime over the years, you realize they're not unsophisticated in the way that they approach negotiations.

And so the idea that they would insist that Lebanon be part of the deal when they control Hezbollah, and of course, the Lebanese government has no control over Hezbollah, you could see where this is going.

And it worked because...

You know, there was there was this this this sort of I don't even know what you want to call this outburst from Vice President J.D.

Vance towards Israel shortly as they were getting ready to sign, you know, saying, look, you better get in line here because you're you know, you've only got one ally and that's us.

And the regime, again, not unsophisticated, looks at those comments from the vice president of the United States.

in the middle of this supposed negotiation and says, well, this is fantastic.

This is exactly what we want.

We want a wedge between the U.S.

and Israel.

Or I guess you could argue, and look, I realize we're armchair quarterbacking this, of course, but you could also argue that during the course of the discussions through the mediators, the U.S.

side, the position could have been, no,

Lebanon, that's a separate issue.

We're not including that in this arrangement.