Richard Miniter

Just nothing.

That took away a prime sniper and mortar position from Hezbollah because that was the high point on the far side of the river.

The fact that there are air raid warning signs now in Christian neighborhoods in Beirut, they are prepared to go north.

And I don't think Trump will meaningfully attempt to stop them.

And for the Christian community of Lebanon, they seem to be saying, and I talked to a handful of Christian Lebanese leaders, not enough to really say definitively what the whole spectrum of opinion is, but the ones that- Yeah, they're not unified.

Oh, no.

And never have been, right?

No.

Like the Armenians and the Jews and the Kurds, like there's no one central view, right?

So, but they've gone from, oh my gosh, we don't want an Israeli invasion.

That'll be a lot of useless slaughter to saying, well, if it gets rid of Hezbollah, that's the only way to save Lebanon.

I mean, the Lebanese currency is functionally gone.

People pay for things in supermarkets now with the US dollar.

If it weren't for the Hezbollah power in parliament, Lebanon probably would have dollarized a year ago.

Um, so there is a real debate about how does Lebanon have a future?

Um, with Hezbollah inside its borders.

And by the way, I think your phrase exhausted realism is exactly right.

There has been such a tremendous change in Middle Eastern Christian thinking.

from a vaguely, or not vaguely, directly pro-Palestinian perspective 20, 25 years ago, to a studied neutrality five years ago, to, yeah, I guess we gotta let the Israelis roll their tanks through here and get rid of these invaders.

And it was, this is an old story, but I think it's important.