Trita Parsi

One of them is, of course, that if the Israelis are allowed to just continue to bomb Lebanon and Gaza, et cetera, that war, that fighting will spill over into an Israeli-Iranian war at some point, and that will likely drag the US into it again.

That's exactly what already has happened twice since October 7th.

So if you want to have a deal with the US,

and US wants to have a deal with Iran that ends this war in a durable fashion, then you cannot allow the Israelis to continue to be able to restart that war.

So on the one hand, the Iranians wanted to establish that deterrence in order to make sure that the Israelis didn't do this.

On the other hand, it is also a longer guarantee for the Iranians, what they call their forward defense, meaning that they want to have this presence or the support in Lebanon as a deterrent against the Israelis attacking Iran, period.

Because this is what they had before Assad fell, before Hezbollah was really weakened by the Pajar attacks.

Let me give you a quick story.

In 2006, as you recall, you were there when Israel and Hezbollah went at each other.

In the midst of that, I ran into Efraim Sneh, who was at the time Deputy Defense Minister of Israel.

I had interviewed him several occasions before.

And he told me very explicitly that Lebanon and Hezbollah is just a pit stop.

The war with Iran is inevitable, but they have to essentially finish off Hezbollah first before they take the war to Iran.

But precisely because the Israelis never managed to defeat Hezbollah, in fact, the Israelis were defeated in that war, the war with Iran didn't start in 2006.

This was a manifestation of the efficiency of Iran's forward defense.

By being able to have Hezbollah there, they stopped the Israelis from taking the war to Iranian territory.

And the Iranians are now trying to reestablish that, which of course the Israelis are gonna fight tooth and nail against, so that the Israelis will not be able to attack Iran again without knowing that they will have a very, very tough time with the Lebanese right on their own border.

Yeah, look, I think this war was a mistake from the outset.

Yeah, you think?

And I told the administration at the time, this should not have been done.