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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Let's find out what's been happening in the Middle East because clashes have continued in southern Lebanon overnight. This is despite Israel and Hezbollah accepting a US plan to implement a partial ceasefire. Channel 4 presenter Matt Fry joins me now. Good morning, Matt. Good morning, Clare.
It's a bizarre situation, isn't it, where you've Donald Trump saying, well, both sides have agreed to step back while they continue to fight.
Well, there's a lot of stuff that Donald Trump has said since the beginning of the war that he started on the 28th of February that doesn't necessarily correspond 100% to the truth and is more an expression of his wishful thinking.
Chapter 2: What are the latest developments in southern Lebanon?
What he wishes, without a shadow of a doubt, is that this war that he started will end sooner rather than later. He needs it to end for political reasons. The price of petrol or gas, as the Americans call it, at the pump has become unsustainable. And it has led to the fact that his popularity ratings are now lower than Joe Biden's were at his lowest point. in his tenure.
Chapter 3: How does the US ceasefire plan affect the conflict?
And of course, if his party loses the midterm elections, both in the House and perhaps even in the Senate, that would really curtail his executive power going forward. However, Donald Trump finds himself in a bind. He is caught between his political desires at home and the reality that Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he started this war, has an entirely different calculation.
And Netanyahu's calculation is that
He is caught between the Americans possibly turning off the tap when it comes to Patriot missiles or other military reinforcements, which the Israelis need, and his own desire to continue the war rather than to end it, because as far as his public is concerned, and of course he also faces elections in October, the Iran war and indeed the Hezbollah war is unfinished business.
Tehran this morning saying on Iranian state television that the Iranians could suspend the US talks over these continuing strikes on Lebanon. So it's not just a case of let Benjamin Netanyahu get on with what he is doing in Lebanon. This affects the entire peace, doesn't it?
It does. So Benjamin Netanyahu has Trump by the short and curlies, as they say in some parts of the world, because essentially if Netanyahu doesn't like whatever agreement the Americans have struck with Iran, He can, you know, it's in his gift to carry on the war by either attacking Iran or by attacking Hezbollah.
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Chapter 4: What role does Donald Trump play in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict?
The Iranians who've been, remember, they've been massively weakened in recent years by Israel's ability to deplete their regional networks, you know, of proxies, whether it's Hamas in the Gaza Strip, whether it's the Houthis in Yemen or in Syria, which of course is gone because Assad was toppled.
but most importantly, Hezbollah, which is the most powerful non-state army on the planet, or certainly was until it started being pummeled by the Israelis. So it's absolutely essential for the Iranians to maintain some degree of their regional power network. And of course, the Israelis are doing everything they can to deplete it.
But what you've got to remember, Claire, is that President Trump, the author of the art of the deal, a man who likes to kind of tell you the highway, my way or the highway, who hates the idea of being beholden to anyone, has now realized that he is actually quite dependent on Benjamin Netanyahu.
And he has expressed his frustration, this story came out late last night, in a number of expletives, which I can't possibly mention on your show, but at least two of them begin, well, one of them begins with the letter F. telling Netanyahu, his supposedly great buddy, that he was crazy and that he was blowing the whole region up, which many people would argue is true.
It has been true for a very long time. The other interesting thing is that in this post on social media, in which Trump was much more polite, but coolly so, about Benjamin Netanyahu, he also mentioned the fact that he had been talking via proxies directly to Hezbollah. Now, no American president as far as we know, has ever publicly declared that they have talked to Hezbollah.
So Trump is really reading Netanyahu the riot act. The question is, will Netanyahu, who's got his own issues at home, listen?
Well, it seems not, because despite Donald Trump saying everyone hates you, unsurprisingly, perhaps that didn't affect Benjamin Netanyahu. And he continued on with those strikes against Hezbollah. Despite, as I said at the beginning, this weird situation where everyone says, oh, yeah, there's a ceasefire in place. And yet both sides continue to attack each other.
And it says an awful lot, doesn't it, about the authority of Donald Trump, the authority of America, because on the other side of this, you've Marco Rubio pleading with the UN now to help them open the Strait of Hormuz. And that help isn't coming, it seems.
And that's been the story of this war, hasn't it? America exercising supreme military power at the very beginning by decapitating the Iranian regime, which they thought would lead to its toppling. That has not been the case. It wasn't, by the way, the case in Venezuela either, which is a much more elegant operation from a military point of view.
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Chapter 5: How are political pressures influencing military decisions?
I mean, Tucker Carlson, whatever you may think of him, and I never thought I'd be defending Tucker Carlson on Irish radio. Off you go. But I think he does... I think he thinks quite carefully about stuff that is going on both in America and in the world. And, you know, you may very well disagree with most of what he thinks, but he thinks about it.
And I think he thinks that Israel has been given a free ride when it comes to its behavior in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. And he doesn't want America, especially when you do believe, and he thinks as he does, that America has to stand strong and essentially alone and by its own principles. That is not the case when you do Israel's bidding for it.
in a distant war which you had pledged never to, you know, go back to. So I don't know. I think Tucker is not so much following public opinion, but I think he's following his own instincts and ideology here. And other people are beginning to follow him.
Do you remember he went to Russia just after Donald Trump was elected this time and Donald Trump clearly was appeasing Putin. Tucker Carlson goes over there and does that sycophantic interview with him. and almost a tourist video in and around Moscow because he felt that that's what everybody wanted him to do.
Now I feel that he thinks that Republicans and the MAGA base would like him to push back against this alliance with Israel and therefore that's where he is going. And the same with Megyn Kelly. I mean, all of those millions of listeners and followers, that's their lunch. So they want to know what these people want to eat, essentially.
Yeah.
I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Again, for fear of being in the Tucker camp here. But I was always puzzled by the fact that he would go to Moscow and do that extraordinarily sycophantic advertisement interview for Vladimir Putin. But then it brought me back to this thought, which has been sort of lingering in the back of my head for some time.
Why do these hardcore MAGA Republicans love Vladimir Putin so much? And I think it's one, his projection of strength. They just love power and power projection, as does Donald Trump with Putin. But also, perhaps more importantly, his war on woke. The last thing you can accuse Putin of being is woke.
And he has been anti-LGBTQ+, anti-woke culture, anti-political correctness in his own culture wars for a very long time. And I think people like Tucker really appreciated that war. And plus, they thought that Ukraine was always a bit corrupt and not worth defending. And by the way, it was yet another foreign war in Europe that America was in danger of getting involved in.
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