Lawfare Daily: How Escalations in Lebanon May Prolong the Iran War, with Joel Braunold

[Intro]

Joel Braunold: The political incentives for the Israelis is to prevent a deal for the, at least until the election. And, you know, whether they're in the room or not, the Israelis and the Iranians are extremely skilled at making sure that each of them are the worst versions of themselves when it comes to trying to sign a deal. So I have no doubt that using the Lebanese as an excuse or as a way to be able to continue to do that.

Scott R. Anderson: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm senior editor Scott R. Anderson with Joel Braunold, the managing director of the Center Project and a Lawfare contributing editor.

Joel Braunold: I think the Israelis, there's no incentive for them to move forward on the Gaza phase two approach with Hamas at this point. Anything that would move forward would legitimate Hamas because you'd have to disarm them and put them in a Palestinian polity. And so I think that the Israelis are slow playing it, giving as many obstacles as possible to get Hamas to say yes.

Scott R. Anderson: Today, we are talking about recent escalations in Lebanon and what they mean for the broader war with Iran.

[Main Podcast]

So Joel, we have seen a real cycle of escalation, a kind of familiar cycle of escalation happen in the Middle East, in particular around between Israel and Lebanon in the past two weeks or so. A, a cycle of violence that in particular has a direct bearing on for a number of broader regional questions, among them including the U.S.-Israel-Iran war, which is in some sort of negotiations process where the White House keeps saying we are close to an agreement to reopening the strait and reaching some sort of resolution but one has not manifested despite several weeks of the White House saying that.

And that makes this Lebanon conflict really a major consideration, even more so than it might be on its own merits, because it's so tied into this broader regional conflict. So talk to us about what this r- most recent cycle of escalation is, what kicked it off, how we saw the different parties respond, and where it leaves this very important kind of keystone element of the r- broader regional conflict.

Joel Braunold: Scott, it's, it's great to be with you and Lawfare again. You know, what's the Lebanon of it all is sort of a big question and an important one. So I think let's start the story. You could start this story what, you know, decades ago, years ago, weeks ago, days ago. But I think just for the listeners to understand, with Hezbollah has been seen mainly as the most important Iranian proxy in the region.

It has been the strongest proxy. It has been the one that the majority of Israeli military planners had been worried about far more than Hamas. That's why there were so many technical strate- you know, technical brilliant operations like the pager operation and others that had managed to decapitate Hamas.

There'd been a lot of planning and execution for sort of trying to deal with what they thought the Israelis felt could have been an existential threat from the north, given the strength of Hezbollah its missile array and everything else. On the latest part of the Iran war that sort of kicked off in February, as Israel and the U.S. were bombing Iran there was a sense in, in, in Israel, would Hezbollah take part?

Hezbollah had been pretty decimated from the previous round between Israel and Hezbollah that had started off with the pages and everything else. And so there was a question whether Hezbollah had reconstituted enough to really participate in this, and that, you know, the original Israeli plan is of having tens of thousands of missiles taking out skyscrapers in Tel Aviv would happen.

And the hope was that they had, they had sort of degraded Hezbollah enough that that would prevent Early on in, I think in day three of the war, there was sort of one or two rockets that were fought, shot from Hezbollah, and in many ways, Israel saw that as the opportunity to once again now go in and sort of take Hezbollah out and say, "Look, we now have a pretext. They shot at us. We said if you shoot at us, we're gonna go in with overwhelming force." Whether it was Hezbollah, whether it was an errant IRGC commander, it's unclear.

Either way, that was the context the Israelis needed. And so alongside the Israeli-Iran front, there was an Israel-Southern Lebanon front, where Israel started to attack pretty viciously in the north and, and Hezbollah responded in kind, and rockets were falling on northern communities.

So as the U.S. wound down and started to go to a ceasefire, the big question in Israel's mind was like, "Look, we're against any deal, like that would leave, you know, the, the three points of the war as we've gone through, nuclear materials, proxies, ballistic missiles." But for Israel, one of the most important things strategically was to ensure that there was no linkages of the fronts.

That what happened in Lebanon between Lebanon and Israel was about Beirut, and what happened with Tehran and D.C. and Tehran and Jerusalem was about that. But that Tehran could not dictate what was happening in Lebanon, because if they could, it was a unity of fronts and strengthen the proxy network, which was one of the objectives that Israel wanted to, to make sure that didn't happen, that it didn't want this ring of fire around them.

And so as D.C was negotiating through the Pakistanis at one point, and now the Qataris, sort of what a ceasefire would look like, the Israelis' equities were like, "You cannot restrain our action when it come to the Lebanese." And if you remember you know, we've been in this never-ending is it a ceasefire, is it not a ceasefire with Iran, but sort of, I think it was like 90 to get, days ago when we started off this ceasefire.

It was unclear that was Lebanon included or was it not? It seemed like the grand field marshal of Pakistan said it was included, but very s- quickly, the Israelis kept firing, and it, it sort of seemed like you could continue firing backwards and forwards, but Beirut was ring-fenced. Because if you remember, very quickly after the ceasefire on April 8th, Israel had what in in Beirut was called Black Monday, where they hit so many targets in Beirut very quickly, flattened a lot of office blocks, which people are-- This was straight after the ceasefire, and there was a sense that this whole thing could spiral out of control.

And so the Trump administration did, and I think I mentioned this on Lawfare at the time, something that I thought was very smart, which was that they created a direct Beirut to Jerusalem track, which is kind of historic, to try and say, "Look, if, if we're empowering the government of Lebanon and we're empowering the LAF, you can work out a ceasefire there, and then, you know, that's what you're dealing with. And if that's a ceasefire, it's not the IRGC and it's not Tehran dealing with your ceasefire, it's Beirut."

And so there's, there's, there's been rounds of ceasefire talks that have been happening between Lebanon and Israel hosted in Washington trying to work out could this ce- ceasefire be stable? And while it's been going on, you know, President Trump says a ceasefire in the region is just firing more moderately.

It seemed like as long as Beirut was ring-fenced off, there could be sort of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, but it would be going backwards and forwards Now, at different times, there was a question of who was party to the ceasefire and was Hezbollah party for it. So every time this ceasefire really shook to its core, they got back into Washington, and the aim was to re-strengthen the ceasefire.

And, you know, President Trump said, "We're talking to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah's agreed." They were using the speaker of the parliament Speaker Berri, to sort of do that. But it was very unclear if Hezbollah was agreeing, and is that Tehran telling Hezbollah to agree? But what basically happened is that Hezbollah has been starting to attack different Israeli positions, both in the north and Israeli soldiers who have taken over the southern of Lebanon.

The Israeli position on southern Lebanon is that they are actually just decimating, in the first 10 kilometers, the villages and the towns in South, in south Lebanon, south of the Litani, to try and give themselves a buffer zone to prevent Hezbollah coming back there. The Lebanese are like, "This is crazy." But in many ways, that was the majority of their, of their restraint that they were going up to there.

But there's been a push from the Israeli military to say, "Listen, we can't just push Hezbollah further north, and they can still fire rockets that would hit our towns and our positions. We can't be restrained. Like, if we see a Hezbollah target in Tyre or we see them in Dheira, w- you know, Dheira, which is, like, a village in a section in South Beirut we should be able to, to go after them, and we can't be restrained by these diplomatic niceties." So there's been a big domestic push on the Israelis to push forward.

The Trump administration has been clear, though that Beirut's off-limits because that would affect the Iranian discourse. So I know this is a lot, but this is sort of, like, the complexities of what's going on. So what happened, it seems, last week was that Hezbollah, after another ceasefire where, like, there was like, "We're all ceasefiring, and everyone's doing it," Hezbollah says, "We're not linked to this ceasefire."

They shot some drones that hit into Israel, and the Israelis were like, "Okay, we'll hit an empty target in Dheira, in, in, in Beirut," basically a Hezbollah sort of headquarters that doesn't have a lot of people there, "But we'll hit them there to show that we can." And so they did that.

And the Iranians were like, "Great. If you did that, now we're gonna bomb Israel." And they shot rockets and missiles over to Israel, so direct Iran to Israel, and that's when we had President Trump said, "Israel, don't you dare respond. You know? Like, you've all shot your rockets. You hit Beirut, and they hit you." And Israel said, "We can't do that. We have to hit back."

They then shot back, and President Trump looked kind of silly after saying no, and he got back on the phone with Prime Minister Netanyahu. And apparently, the, the pilots were on the tarmac. They were ready to do massive infrastructure damage to Iran, and President Trump talked them off and said, "You cannot do that," and sort of restrained them from that.

And so again, we're back in this weird dynamic where the Israelis are having operations sort of across Lebanon but not in Beirut. That seems to have satisfied the Iranians. If Beirut's off limits, that's okay. And it's, it's very un- uncomfortable as we go into the domestic politics of Israel about why that's the case.

But fundamentally, Scott, from all of that, just to try and understand it, the Israelis want to make sure that if they negotiate a compromise with the Lebanese, so right now the compromise is that the Lebanese Armed Forces will have bubble areas where they take out Hezbollah and that they're in charge, right?

If we want to do that, that is negotiated between us and the Lebanese, and if they can't restrain Hezbollah from attacking us, we will attack Hezbollah wherever it is. The Iranians are saying to the Americans and to the other mediators on that, "If the Israelis attack Beirut, we will attack them. We're not willing to."

And that is the fundamental strategic disagreement between Jerusalem and DC. Jerusalem cannot afford for there to be a linkage of the fronts. DC doesn't really care, and that they've got this diplomatic process between Beirut and, and Jerusalem, and that should be enough. But, you know, if we need to keep the Iranians from stopping Hezbollah from shooting, that's okay if we need to keep that calm down. And for the Israelis, that linkage is, is unforgivable

Scott R. Anderson: So in the last week, we've seen this exchange of fire between the Israelis, the Iranians, you know, Iranians hitting Israel, Israel hitting the Iranians, Israelis hitting the Lebanese, Hezbollah. In the midst of this, the part of this that has gotten the most attention here in the United States isn't actually the violence that's been involved.

It's been a notable phone call between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, one by an account that appears to be leaked by the White House itself, I would guess. I don't know what, who else would be in a position to confirm this, and I don't think the, you know, Israelis are going to be leaking it, in which President Trump basically told Netanyahu, "You're crazy. What are you doing? You know, I saved you from going to jail. We need you to stop this." And then Trump later in public remarks and to the media said essentially, "Look, I call all the shots. Bibi doesn't call any of the shots on this." This all took place before the last round of Israeli strikes on Iran, as I recall.

So almost a direct kind of response arguably, or at least the timing did not look great on, after in response to Trump's claims of calling the shots and having directed Netanyahu not to reciprocate, not to follow up on additional cycle of violence. What do we make of this conversation and the apparent decision of the Trump administration, or someone in the Trump administration to, to leak it, to make a public case about it, and what does it tell us about that strategic tension between the United States and Israel, who are of course the two that were working hand-in-hand when, when they started the conflict with Iran on February 28th?

Joel Braunold: It, it's confusing 'cause there's multiple different conversations, some that were leaked and some that were public. So it appears that last week there was a conversation between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump where there were expletives and, and all of these different things that, you know, Barak Ravid reports on, people say, "No, it's not true."

And then basically Trump confirms it to the New York Post and everyone else in terms of like, you know, "You're crazy. You're doing this stuff." And then separately, after Netanyahu orders the IDF to strike, as I said, Beirut, and then the Iranians attack Tel Aviv and the north, there's a There's another phone call, but these phone calls are very interesting.

These weren't secret phone calls. President Trump calls Barak Ravid and also calls Channel 11, a different channel in Israel, and basically says, "I'm about to call Prime Minister Netanyahu and tell him not to respond." So all these people who say, oh, he's playing 5D chess and this and that, I don't think there's any way that President Trump wants to look weak domestically.

And if he's publicly saying in, to the Israeli press, "I am going to tell your prime minister not to strike," he, as in President Trump, will look weak if Prime Minister Netanyahu defies him. So you, you- once he's made these calls, and this was at the earlier this week, so today is the 10th of June, so I think this was on Monday.

There was a or over the weekend, like time has no meaning anymore. There's a, there's a question about whether Prime Minister Netanyahu has to respond. The entire political system is saying he has to respond, right? The opposition's killing him. His coalition's killing him. You can't, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu has famously said the most important thing that a prime minister of Israel needs to do is to be able to say no to an American president when it's, when it's our interests.

And he basically goes forward and, and issues strikes against Iran. They were against a petrochemical plant that they claim was utilized for ballistic missile production. But these aren't sort of attacks on the oil fields or on the power plants or anything else.

Scott R. Anderson: Explicitly avoided those targets with, what some people read as a nod towards Trump's preferences.

Joel Braunold: As, you know, maybe that was a safe-phasing, face-saving maneuver. But it's still a direct repudiation of President Trump, who publicly went on Israeli television and basically said he's not allowed to do it, and then also went to the FT and says, "I call the shots," and then Netanyahu does it. So in many ways, that shows you the limits of even President Trump Ability to restrain the Israelis.

Like, when it comes to, like, we have been fired upon by Iran, we will respond. There's nothing that anyone can do to prevent that response. You could limit it, you could do other things, but they were going to respond. But it seems that President Trump had a second phone call with Prime Minister Netanyahu the next day and basically said, "Look," and apparently according to reports, it was a lot calmer, and said, "Y- you do you, but if you go by yourself now, you're on your own. We are close to a deal, and you will wreck it."

And that was enough for Prime Minister Netanyahu to call back the planes that were gonna go apparently and hit major infrastructure sites in Iran. But later, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu sometimes briefs the media by saying a senior Israeli official.

You know, it was briefed to the Israelis that in the cabinet, basically Netanyahu said, "We might reach a situation where we're gonna have to deal with the Iranians completely alone without the Americans, and that will come with a lot of international isolation and potentially weapons restrictions. But if that's what we need to do, that's what we need to do."

And so what I take from the calls this week is that the Israelis don't want to see a bad deal, and they're very worried that this could be a bad deal, that they will not allow Tehran to, to dictate the escalation ladder towards them, and yet the Lebanese problem remains, right? That you, you can't live in a situation where you're completely restrained from attacking Hezbollah, but it does appear, at least right now, that the ring fencing around Beirut still exists, that, that they're not gonna strike Beirut, and then Iran won't strike Israel.

And in many ways, that's a strategic failure for the Israelis because that is a relinkage of the fronts in a way that they feel uncomfortable. However, it is a victory in the sense that the Iranians did say in their statements when they were willing to stop firing on Israel that Israel must also stop their operations in South Lebanon.

Israel has not stopped their operations in South Lebanon, and Iran has not responded, which demonstrates that the sort of, when you, when you toss out all of the rhetoric and the face-saving stuff, it seems like the status quo is the Israelis and the Lebanese can continue to try and figure out how they can deal with the problem of Hezbollah.

Israel can't attack Beirut without there being an Iranian response, but everything else won't threaten at least the deal as such. Though, given US, Iranian currently responding on strikes to each other, I don't know if we're gonna get to a deal, if we're not gonna get to a deal. Who knows? But for the Israelis, no deal is better than a bad deal, and the longer that it moves away from a deal, the better strategically it is for them, and I'd argue politically it is for Netanyahu as well.

Scott R. Anderson: So let's dig into what a bad deal would look like to the Israelis. Like, the, the main issue you've hit on is this front linkage. You know, they are concerned about Lebanon because it's proximate, it's a real threat. Hezbollah has-- was traditionally, I think, before October 7th, seen as the greatest, most direct threat to Israel.

Still a very real threat despite being substantially diminished by Israeli military operations the last few years. But there's obviously nexus of other issues implicated by the Iran conflict, and particularly the nuclear file. This is the focus of the Trump administration. It's the focus of the American political scene for a variety of reasons, at least in part because of Trump's personal involvement in breaking down the JCPOA deal that a decade ago was supposed to forestall an Iranian nuclear program.

Traditionally, that is an issue set that has been framed in substantial part, not just in terms of U.S. interests, but in terms of Israeli security interests. Israel was always seen as the most proximate, realistic target of an Iranian nuclear attack, if there was one. And that's something we've heard, I think even Prime Minister Netanyahu invoke as a possibility just this past week in justifying some of his actions.

So how does that fit into this picture in terms of Israeli concerns? Like, what do they want to see out of this deal? Or is the nuclear file a little bit of a red herring in terms of where they see their most proximate real security interests? Are they more concerned about proxy networks breaking down Hezbollah in Lebanon, perhaps limiting Iran's ability to back other proxies that are a regional problem for Israel in Gaza and elsewhere?

And then also part of this is the economic pressure. Obviously, that's the big driver on the United States, and frankly, most of the global economy, is the Strait of Hormuz being shut down. How real are those economic pressures for Israelis? How insulated are they from them relatively compared to the Americans, Europeans, others that have kind of a, a vote in this picture?

A- and what does that tell us about the timelines that they have in the, the increasing war of attrition that's happening between Iran and the United States, and now, frankly, Israel to s- and Hezbollah to some extent as well?

Joel Braunold: So it's a big question. All right, so firstly, the Israeli strategic, and I'd even argue political arenas align that the number one thing that a deal has to deal with is the nuclear file.

There's no differentiation there. I think they-- the worry is, is that the Iranians will play the Americans, right? The, the reason that they were very upset, the Israelis with the JCPOA, was they felt the sunset provisions, everything else, that the Iranians would cheat on the deal, and even if they didn't, they'd be in such a strong position post the sunsets of the deal, they could race towards a nuclear bomb.

You know, the, one of the Trumpian sayings says, you know, "No dust, no cash." Great. Get rid of the nuclear dust that's under the sites. Get rid of all of the enrichment, enriched uranium, get it all out, and then fine, like we can talk about a deal, but the Iranians don't wanna go there. The-- for the Israelis, the n- the threat of the Straits of Hormuz being closed is not that relevant for them.

Like, their economy is not as dependent on, you know, their oil comes from Azerbaijan and others, they've got their own natural gas fields in the Eastern Med. Like, the- they're not sort of like massively exporting through the Straits of Hormuz. That's not, that's not their problem, right? That's a re- that's a Gulf problem.

That's not a their problem. So, you know, if the Iranians choose to threaten the region through the Straits of Hormuz and give up their nuclear program, from the Israelis' perspective, it's great. You can work around that through a different regional integrative model of pipelines and other things, and you don't have to worry about nukes.

So the nuke file is definitely the big issue, and I think there's a big worry, as there has always been with the Trump administration, that Trump's desire to get a deal will be a bad deal. You know, we're already going to timelines, 10 years, 20 years. What does that look like? What is given to the Iranians in return?

You know, there's this sort of like sell, sell that this isn't gonna be the JCPOA because I think Vance went on Fox News over the weekend and said, "We will have a real inspections regime, and the JCPOA didn't have a real inspections regime." I- I mean, I think that the authors of the JCPOA would push back pretty hard on that, but whatever.

There's an attempt to sell that this is going to be a different, better deal, and even the very big skeptics of the deal, when you look at sort of the FDD types and others who are speaking online, they're still saying, "Look, you know, we have deteriorated, and we've sort of disassembled a lot of the Iranian military might."

But yet if that's true, how is it that America's hitting still radar array and anti-aircraft? I thought we got rid of all of their anti-aircraft and radars before. Like, every time that we think that we've been told all of this stuff has been destroyed, suddenly it's back again, and we're destroying it again.

So it seems very confusing about what really has been deteriorated in terms of Iranian assets and what hasn't been. So the Israelis are primarily concerned about that. But what they're also concerned about, you know, for them it's a three-part thing. It's nukes, it's proxies, and it's ballistic missiles because the, the proxies is the way that Iran threatens the region, and the ballistic missiles is how they directly gain strength in order to threaten people And so the Israelis would want to see a weakened Iran that will eventually lead to regime change, right?

Their, the ultimate desire of the Ira- of the Israeli policy is to force regime change and have a different regime. And if that forces Iran to splinter into separate factors, they don't care, right? It's not their part of the region. It takes out a regional actor. If you're Saudi or you're the Gulf GCC cases, you know, having a failed state of Iran is terrible for you, like in terms of what that would mean in terms of your own domestic security and others.

So I think that the GCC are trying, even the UAE, you know, are trying to work out how they can have like a counterbalance. Like if Iran's going to stay, w- how can we have an equilibrium with them so that they don't threaten our core domestic interests? And then at the same time, how do we have an equilibrium with the Israelis so that they don't threaten our core domestic interests?

So like, you know, there's gonna be a, a regional rebalancing. For the Israelis, anything that leaves the Iranian regime standing is bad. But th- if you had to rank the badness, nuclear file is definitely A, B, and C, and then the other things go under that. And so I think there's a big worry about what's being developed on the nuclear file.

And again, when you listen to JD Vance's statements over the weekend where he says, "We could have a deal that's in the best interest for America, even if it's not the same interest for Israel," that, that perks up Israeli ears in terms of what that's worrying about. You've got the DIA report about Israeli spying on America going up and all this sort of, you know, the, the general atmospherics in America that, you know, are Israeli and U.S. interests aligned when it comes to this, and what does that mean?

So I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of worry in, in Jerusalem because in many ways, 16 years of policy since 2006 or longer than that, so 20 years of policy from Netanyahu about putting a, putting a, a target on a nuclear Iran, and then it needs a military solution. Okay, so it's been tried. So right now the question is, do we double down on that strategy, and do we try even harder?

Or has it run its course? And if it's run its course, what's the next strategy? And these are the debates that are happening. But I, I'd say, Scott, there's some more worrying stuff that's going on outside of just the proxies. You know, you heard President Trump last week throw in the Abraham Accords, basically saying to the Saudis, you know, "Join the Abraham Accords," and everyone else, Qatar and Pakistan and Turkey, who already has diplomatic relations with Israel, you know, like, "Join the Abraham Accords, you know, if I'm gonna do all this work for you."

And in many ways, that's a very worrying thing. Now it's not because you can be pro or against the Abraham Accords. It's because if you assume that the military strategy has run its course, and let's assume that Saudi doesn't join the Abraham Accords because Trump just told them to, and let's assume that the war restarts, right?

And let's assume that Iran hits something in Saudi that's valuable to them. You could imagine the headlines the next day in Jerusalem and DC saying, "Well, if you had just agreed to the Abraham Accords, then this wouldn't have happened to you." What's your average Saudi gonna think? Like, you're gonna... Not only are you trying to force us to be humiliated, but we've now had our core assets been destroyed, and you're saying it's our fault?

I think you could bury regional integration for the next generation. So you're taking one potential optimistic thing in the region and throwing it onto the all-in pile of, like, military strategy on Iran, and that's a very risky proposition. So for the Israelis, you know, the Abraham Accords needs to be more strategic than just a political win, right, to sort of get out of the current quagmire, and I think that's one of the reasons they've been pushing it.

So that's a lot of, like, unpacking, but I think for the Israelis, the, the nuclear file is the most important file, but it needs to be solved in a way that Iran does not control and get to have its enriched uranium, and it can't enrich on its stuff. And again, we're getting back to all the traditional arguments that we had throughout the Obama years.

You know, can you get a deal that the Iranians will agree to that is that harsh? I, I don't know. The Iranians want reparations from the war damages, Straits of Hormuz, all this stuff. And so the Israelis' equities on the economic pressure is not the same as the Americans and America's allies because they don't-- that, that doesn't hurt their economy in the same way. And in terms of timelines, the most important timeline in Israel is the election.

So Israel will go to the polls sometime between September 15th and the 27th. Prime Minister Netanyahu has promised total victory. There has not been total victory on any front. Hezbollah is still standing. Hamas is still in Gaza. The regime in Tehran still exists. So how does he sell what he's doing?

And I think that what's important is that you can't get to a perspective where there's a deal with the Iranian regime that strengthens it during this time. So the political incentives for the Israelis is to prevent a deal for the-- at least until the election. And, you know, whether they're in the room or not, the Israelis and the Iranians are extremely skilled at making sure that each of them are the worst versions of themselves when it comes to trying to sign a deal.

So I have no doubt that using the Lebanese as an excuse or as a way to be able to continue to do that.

Scott R. Anderson: So I wanna circle back to the Israeli domestic politics, which clearly is a big part of this picture. Before I do, though, I, I wanna spend a little bit more time on this U.S.-Israeli relationship because these dynamics are odd.

You hit, I think, the nail on the head with a couple of data points that are worth noting, the JD Vance comments, the decision to leak this call with Netanyahu. And we know this is occurring against a backdrop where you have a substantial voices in the Republican Party, and particularly in the kind of MAGA wing, or at least the restraint-oriented corners that often affiliate with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, that have been openly skeptical and critical of the U.S. relationship with Israel and up to and including participation in this conflict.

Different stripes, different people have different limits, but that's kind of definitely a tenor kind of w- associated with Tucker Carlson and a kind of increasing kinda element of that corridor of the Republican Party. At the same time, we're also seeing shifts, strong shifts on the Democratic side about views towards the United States relationship with Israel, particularly driven by concerns over the Gaza conflict, the handling of the Gaza conflict with the Biden administration, which is a huge internal schism in the party leading up to the last presidential election.

You know, all around, you're just seeing the, the U.S.-Israeli relationship is in a state of flux and political contestation in a way that I don't think I've seen in my adult lifetime. I don't think any, many people have at this point that are still with us at this point, you know, except for some of our oldest relatives and friends.

So, you know, what does this tell us about the type of leverage Trump has, has over Netanyahu and vice versa? I mean the Trump administration and Netanyahu have historically worked hand in glove in a lot of different contexts, particularly during the first Trump administration. I mean, you know, Netanyahu got to announce the recognition of Israeli claims over the Golan Heights, right?

Like, that's the degree to which we saw a lot of coordination. Early in this administration, it seems like leaning in that same direction. In part, you saw, you know, the Trump administration make cracking down on speech in support of Palestinians a major pillar, a early pillar of its immigration policies in a very controversial, constitutionally questionable way.

We've seen a lot of engagement, yet you saw tension and pushback against the Israelis around Gaza, an effort to get into Gaza deal, as you and I have discussed. So what does this just all tell us about what the dynamic of this relationship is likely to be? 'Cause if it comes down to the Israelis and the Americans just have fundamentally different interests, one is either gonna have to dictate to the other, or the other is gonna be able to be a spoiler for what they wanna accomplish.

Israel's gonna stop the Trump administration from getting the deal it wants, or the Trump administration is gonna get the deal it wants and either cut the Israelis out ignore them, or somehow force them to concede and play along with some version at least of what they're trying to get out of it.

How much leverage does one side have over the other to accomplish either of those outcomes effectively? And does that tell us something about the trajectory of this relationship, given that we have security assistance agreements coming to expiration soon? We see an ongoing debate about how to handle security assistance to Israel going on ar- around the NEAA that's currently being kind of debated in the House and soon in the Senate.

So, you know, is this, like, a really representative experience that tells us something about where this whole relationship is headed?

Joel Braunold: I mean, we could do three hours on this, like-

Scott R. Anderson: Maybe that's a second podcast, yeah.

Joel Braunold: Maybe that's a second podcast, 'cause there's a lot to unpack. Look, I will remind avid listeners of our conversations, if you go back to the podcast we recorded just before, after President Trump was elected but before he was inaugurated, we spoke about this, and we said, "He'll do everything for the pro-Israel camp domestically, and he will undercut Israel's strategic interest in the region, 'cause he's a deal maker."

And in many ways that was that wasn't prophetic, it was just, it was one of the options, and it seems to be the one that's come out, right? That ultimately he gives you everything you want domestically and strategically in the region, like, he, he's friends with a lot of the people that the Israelis find very frustrating, from the Qataris to the Turks, to now Trump, you know, saying, "We're gonna be rebuilding half of Iran if we get half the oil."

Like, what does that mean, then? You can't bomb anyone 'cause you could be bombing, like, U.S. contractors? Like, you know, all of these different things, and I think from the Israelis, like, as we said at the time, with the Trump administration, it's like going to the casino. You could win everything or you could lose your house.

And, like, in many ways, that's a very uncomfortable way to be I, I think that when you look at the broader context of the U.S.-Israel relationship, you're seeing a, a paradigmatic shift in both parties for different reasons. I think in, on the, on the Democratic side, you're sort of seeing the death of the values-based relationship.

I think the Democrats don't understand what Israel wants. The Democrats are very clear about what they're against. They're against settlements, home demolitions. They're against the combat in Gaza. They, they don't-- They want peace, but they, they don't know what Israel wants. Israel hasn't defined post-Octo- you know, even pre-October 7th, you know, there was something on normalization and some bone to the Palestinians, but post-October 7th, Israel hasn't defined what it wants.

Until it says what it is for, Democrats don't know what to do with Israel. Like, that's just-- I, I think we're seeing that in primary after primary. We're seeing that as the debates in the party because the party wants to have a values-based foreign policy in some regards. Yes, of course, there's interests, but if we can't speak to our values, and if Israel doesn't tell us what it's for how can we be for it?

Like, I, I don't know what it is. If Israel turns into Iran, I don't think it's going to, but if it does, why should we be for it? Like, there's no reason, and like when you look at some of the trends and what's going on in the West Bank and what's going on in Gaza and, like, the voices that are heard and the impunity of action and sort of the, the, the horror show of lots of different things, I'm not for that, so tell me what I should be for, right? That's on the Democratic side.

On the Republican side, I think it's always been an interest-based conversation. I think there has been a religious element amongst some of the evangelical community. I think that's a generational shift. I think that it's very difficult, I think, in Republican world, that if you are not for Netanyahu, do you have a place in the party of people who have traditionally dealt with this issue?

You know, in the, in Democratic politics, you've got everything from, like, APAC to JVP, Jewish Voice for Peace, and everything in between. In the Republican side, the, it doesn't really exist, right? You've got the, the moderate position is, like, Bibi's okay, and, like, the extreme position is, like, Ben-Gvir is great.

And, like what's in between, and, like, who do you go to? So I think it has been a very interesting growth in sort of Palestinian Christian advocacy, and I think that when you listen to JD Vance, like, the patriarch of Jerusalem was just in the White House this week last week, meeting with, with Trump and speaking about the plight of basically probably Palestinian Christians directly to him.

And like, you know, the, there's a different angle to that. We have an evangelical ambassador, who of course is very pro-Israel, but we've got like a, a, a, a Catholic vice president and there's a lot of Christendom, like, in this stuff and, and I think that changes the relationship, and I, and I don't think that the Israelis, and I've said this before, I think the right in Israel misunderstands the right in America.

I think they think that they hate Palestinians, and I don't think that's correct. I think that the right in America is very skeptical about the Palestinian authority, but actually doesn't hate Palestinians at all. And when they, they perceive that the Israelis are behaving in a supremacist way towards specifically Palestinian Christians or Christians in the region and we've seen images of that, sadly, quite a few times over the past few months, that really offends them, and then that makes them re-question the relationship.

And then when it comes to interests, the Iran war in many ways, Scott, is pushing that to the edge. Like, the Iran war is not popular in America. I mean, the Trump base will do what Trump wants, but it doesn't mean that the Iran war is popular with them. It's just 'cause Trump said it, right? And I think that's really challenging as this goes on and on and on.

And to the extent that this can be blamed on someone else, I think President Trump has always been very happy if there's been a bad situation to blame someone else for that situation. And in many ways, the phone calls of this past week can be laying the groundwork if he wants to. Though I wouldn't say that there's a, a massive schism between Trump and Netanyahu.

You know, they've always found a way to work together but, you know, if Netanyahu doesn't look like he's going to be a winner when it comes to the election, does Trump start hedging and looking at other candidates? Does he strongly, you know, back Netanyahu? What does that look like? 'Cause Trump likes backing winners and, you know, I don't think that that's there.

And I think that when we look at both the next two and a half years of the Trump administration, the region sees Israel as America's responsibility. So Trump is going to need to restrain Israeli action if he doesn't want them to play spoiler, and he's gonna have to find a way to do that. And we've seen some limits and some non-limits but You know, for him, it's not about threatening aid relationships or MOUs.

He just basically dictates and screams at them because people don't want to get on the wrong side of Trump, because what could he possibly do if you do get on the wrong side of Trump? And there's so many different factors of what that could do if you do. Like, there was a CBS report that he said that he was gonna turn off missiles defense to Israel against Iranian missiles should they go by themselves.

I could see him doing that. If he's like, "Go by yourself. Fine, I'm telling CENTCOM to stand down." Like, what does that do? What does it do if he stops allowing them to tap on, like, the weapon stores, the cash deposits that exist in Israel that they're allowed to tap on? Like, there are, there are things that can be done that can really challenge that.

And also just politically, he doesn't really care about the UN, but it's a signal to the region if he starts really investing in Turkish modalities rather than in Israeli ones. And so I think that there are things. So I think we're entering into opening up what are U.S.-Israel interests. And when you open up that Pandora's box, Scott, there's a lot of things that are sacred cows that are put on the table.

So we've seen Castro talk about Israel's nuclear deterrence, you know, publicly, Representative Castro and ask Marco Rubio about that. We've seen Tim Kaine and others ask, "Is CENTCOM obeying and working with Israeli evacuation orders in Lebanon?" Like, there's a lot of, like, interoperability questions around Section 224 of the NDAA.

Does that really create a dependency in procurement? Does it not? I think that Quincy was a little bit overblown in their analysis, but you know, this is stuff that has been going on quite quietly, and now it's becoming a political issue for people. And as we move from the MOU to, like, joint from aid to sort of co-investment, what does that look like and how can there be restraints on that?

So that is a long way of saying I think the Iran war has been an accelerant in the Republican Party to really question things from an interest level in the same ways that Democrats have got there because of a lack of what they see as shared values at this point. And both of the parties are coming to the same conclusion that we need to examine this.

I don't think they're gonna land in the same spot, but if you're an Israeli strategist, it is an urgent blinking red light that you need to repair your relationships, not just in the Democratic Party, but I'd argue in the non-Marco Rubio parts of the Republican Party as well.

Scott R. Anderson: So we got a sense of the domestic position here in the United States.

Let's go back to the Israeli domestic conversation. We know we have an election forthcoming. Talk to us about how this issue, the Lebanon conflict, the broader Iran conflict, fits into the electoral dynamics, how the opposition is handling it, and how it integrates with the other two outstanding issues, which were, we should touch on while we're here, which are Gaza, of course, where we still in theory have a peace process ongoing, although it's hit lots of rocks recently, and then the West Bank, the area that has traditionally been a huge flashpoint, I think that a lot of people thought was going to be the big flashpoint, the Biden administration did when it came into office, and yet has somehow, of the different fronts Israel is facing, kind of fallen in a little more quiet, at least in terms of Western media attention, but has huge implications.

It has huge changes in policy implemented by this administration and has been a huge source of tensions there as well. So talk to us about, about those issues as well, how the, this Lebanon issue fits with all of those.

Joel Braunold: So let's start with Lebanon. You know, it was interesting over the past two, three months, and it's become ever more apparent, there has been a feeling amongst the Israeli population that we're reaching the limits of just military power, which is interesting, right?

And in some ways, Trump forced that by forcing a ceasefire between the Lebanese and the Israelis, and Netanyahu therefore needing to own it. And so then you've got sort of different veins in the Israeli polity saying, "Well, maybe we also need a diplomatic horizon with the Lebanese that can deal with Hezbollah, because they're so far we can bomb them."

And in many ways, sort of a few weeks ago, the Israelis moved the positions up and took over the Castle of Buffon, all right? And that has a very emotive place in Israel's heart. They've literally, literally have seen this movie before. There was a movie called Beaufort that Joseph Cedar made, it won an Oscar that was about, you know, the pointlessness of the occupation of Southern Lebanon between 1982 and when Ehud Barak evacuated in 2000.

Just soldiers dying for no reason, Hezbollah growing. You know, famously, like, it looks like heaven, but it feels like hell. Like, all this stuff. And so you've got Israeli grandparents who saw their children die or, like, very threatened there, who are now watching their grandchildren basically make the same mistake.

And even, you know, there's a lobby in the north of Israel called 1701, named after the UN resolution, that represents 100,000 people in the north, and they had been very hawkish. But after the last ceasefire talks, they even tweeted in English, it seems, at President Trump, saying, "We support sort of a ceasefire in some ways," because they understand that there has to be a diplomatic horizon.

They can't just live by the sword forever. The, the communities won't recover, and that there has to be something. So I think that on the Lebanese side, there is this desire for this to work. And yet for this to work, Hezbollah needs to not upset the apple cart because you're gonna need enough time for the LAF to get strong enough to do its work.

And to give that time, you're gonna need Tehran to also agree to that, which strengthens the very thing you're trying to weaken. So the Israelis are stuck in a Gordian knot, where if you want the diplomacy to work with, you know, the Lebanese state, it needs to be strong enough that it can take on Hezbollah, and you need to not be humiliating it.

Like when Israel last week had a strike that killed some members of the LAF, that just humiliates the LAF and makes people feel like, well, Hezbollah are the only defenders of Lebanon. So how do you do this without, you know, creating a civil war in Lebanon is a very complicated situation. You know, you need to show you're not at war with the Shiites, you're just at, at war with Hezbollah, and it's a very delicate dance that a military hammer alone doesn't do.

So I think it's a complicated diplomatic thing to do during an election where the north has felt completely abandoned, and the incentive structure for the opposition is to say, "Let's go stronger and harder and not be restrained by the Americans." It's a perverse incentive structure that doesn't, you know-- We-- You can keep on hammering away in north, in southern Lebanon and occupying it.

It's not gonna deal with Hezbollah. And so what do you do? I think that's a real difficult policy question and political question and domestic As I said earlier, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu promised total victory in all these fronts, and there's no total victory in any of these fronts. You know, he's now talking about taking 70% of Gaza, going down to Gaza, you know, up from 51%.

And, you know, Marco Rubio was asked about that in the Senate, and he's like, "Well, that's not our plan." And the senators were like, "Well, how are you restraining it?" And the answer was, "I dunno." Like, I don't know. So not, not very positive. I think the Israelis, there's no incentive for them to move forward on the Gaza phase two approach with Hamas at this point.

Anything that would move forward would legitimate Hamas, 'cause you'd have to disarm them and put them in a Palestinian polity. And so I think that the Israelis are slow-playing it, giving as many obstacles as possible to get Hamas to say yes and just saying, "You need to disarm, you need to disarm, you need to disarm."

And Hamas is like, "Well, you have obligations as well." And the Israelis are like, "You need to disarm before we even talk about those obligations." You know, Nikolai Malinov, who's the high representative, is caught between these, and I personally don't see any productive momentum moving forward between now and and election day.

I think the Americans are-- It's ironic, the Trump administration's in the same position as the Biden administration was, which is just forcing Israel to keep the lines of humanitarian aid open to go through, and that's sort of the limits of what they seem to be able to do or are willing to do. You know, everyone's talking part...

You know, there were additional conversations today in Cairo around disarmament. Until the Israelis also want to put some of their commitments on the table, I, I just don't see how it moves forward. And that also then looks, links to the West Bank You know, you've got Smotrich and Ben-Gvir who represent, I don't know, maybe like 7% or 8% of the country running 70% of the policy in the West Bank, where there's a clear push to try and collapse the Palestinian Authority and use this opportunity to do it.

So it's not pressure to reform it, it's pressure to collapse it. And as long as the pressure is to collapse, there's nothing really to talk about. There's nothing the PA can do. So, you know, they'll try and reform prisoner payments, and they'll be told, "Nothing you do is good enough." They'll try and work on different things, and it's like, you know, "No."

And at the same time, you've got marauding gangs of settler violence that continues going. You've got a far more lax open fire policy from the IDF itself. It doesn't seem that there are that many consequences when there are tragic, horrendous incidents that's happened. Just yesterday a, a seven-month-old baby was killed in Hebron.

And the videos of it are horrific. And it's like, what will be the consequences? And no one's sure, right? And, you know, despite there have been pushes, and Marco Rubio said this again in, on Capitol Hill, you know, the Israelis have made some steps to try and have new policing units and others to try and police, you know, some of the settler violence that's coming out, and that some of it's from the settlements, some of it's gangs coming from Tel Aviv.

Whatever it is, the Israeli state is either unwilling or unable to deal with this. And, you know, when you have a police minister who's very okay with it, when you've got a, a minister within the defense in Smotrich who sees this as a nationalistic fight to the death it's very hard when the state's at war with itself about how do you deal with this.

And there's a lot of pressure. And in many ways, when Israel can't demonstrate to the region or even to itself that it can be rational towards the Palestinians, that instead it has to just liquidate the Palestinian national aspirations, the region listens, right? And the region understands. So what does that actually mean, Scott?

So everyone's waiting for, you know, will there be regional integration with the Saudis? And, you know, what would that look like? Well, fundamentally, that's about IMEC, right? This India Middle East corridor that goes from India through the UAE, through Saudi, all the way through Israel to sort of ship things out Well, yesterday the Turks and the Saudis signed a rail agreement that basically creates their version of IMEC, but doesn't include Israel and goes through Jordan and Syria, right?

And directly that way, and doesn't include the UAE. And so the region is basically, I think, saying, like, if you can't get-- if you can't demonstrate that you're rational to the Palestinians, if you can't even get a credible pathway, not a Palestinian state tomorrow, a credible pathway to a Palestinian state, which by the way is point 19 of the Trump agreement that Israel is a signatory of, right?

If you can't even get there, then there's nothing to talk about, and we will find a way to, to move on without you. I think that the next government of Israel in four months is gonna be-- is gonna have a very tough decision on its hand, that it's gonna have to be able to demonstrate both in the West Bank and in Gaza, a policy that demonstrates to the region that it can be rational towards the Palestinians and that this pressure that is being applied is to reform the PA, not to collapse it.

Because without that, the region will not integrate with it. It just won't. And to claim, well, you know, what then happens? Well, that's when the Turks can steal a march on them. And Scott, I go back to what we're seeing right now between Ankara and Jerusalem is a disaster. We're speaking today on Wednesday the 10th.

Today, you've had pot shots again between Erdogan and Netanyahu, both very extreme, they're both rhetorical attacks on each other. The Turks basically saying Israeli strikes on Syria and Lebanon are hurting Turkish interests, and then accusing Netanyahu of being Hitler and everything under the sun. And then Netanyahu responding, saying, you know, "The Turks think they're gonna..."

You know, the interior minister the day before said, "You're gonna try and take over Jerusalem. Screw you Turkish Ottomans, you who committed a genocide against the Kurds and against the Armenians. And like, you know, we will make sure that your empire..." Y-you know, you've got a NATO member and a key U.S. ally basically rhetorically ever-increasing with no seemingly ability to deescalate this relationship, and you've got the administration sort of balkanized in their approach in terms of how they look at Turkey and how they look at Israel, and that's very problematic long term as well.

So it's a mess, right? But the Israeli population, just to finish this off, is in e- in even a more difficult situation than what I've already put out. Because the popular sentiment when you poll it basically says 80% of Israelis thought that the U.S.-Israel war with Iran went very well for US-Israel relations, like 80%.

60% think that it improved their relationships in the region, and only 20% thought that they have to do something with the Palestinians to improve their relationships. And yet when you step outside of Israel, every one of those polling is reversed, right? And so how does a leader hear all of that and then has to confront their population that is completely on the opposite side of each one of those dynamics?

It's very complicated, and Netanyahu's setting up a dynamic, as I said earlier on, where he's like, "If we have to go by ourselves on our own and face international isolation, we'll do it." And so that's part of the problem set on the Israeli domestic space of how can you make an argument that- You know, Netanyahu's mishandled the U.S. relationship, the, the regional picture's bad, that we need to have a different policy.

When the opposition in many ways just, they, they criticize Netanyahu often from his right when it comes from the regional policies, and yet Netanyahu's probably at the most right-edge flank that you could do without truly creating regional conflagration when it comes to Israel. And so th- there isn't that sort of lane in Israeli domestic thinking, maybe with the exception of Lebanon, as I mentioned before, about a different pathway forward.

And it's gonna be essential they create one, otherwise I don't see how when Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, at the behest of the president, come to the next Israeli prime minister and say, "Hey, guys, we wanna move on with the Gaza process and regional integration. You know, here's a deal of a century part two on the Palestinians. What's your response? What are you for?" I don't know what they're gonna respond. And, and they're gonna have to respond something.

Scott R. Anderson: So before we go, I, I think we have to talk about the one other big actor that's a key element in all this, and that is the Lebanese government. You know, we of course had a ceasefire on June 3rd, negotiated on June 3rd or thereabout, I think it was June 3rd, between Israel and the Lebanese government that kind of precipitated or predated this latest cycle of escalation that we've seen between the two sides.

Hezbollah didn't buy into that agreement, but in theory had this idea that Lebanese forces were gonna start taking some responsibility for pockets of South of the Litani, of Southern Lebanon. Never implemented. We don't really know where it's going now. And meanwhile, the Lebanese government is stuck in this very difficult position where it is trying to negotiate with the Israelis, but doesn't have control over Hezbollah.

And in some ways this is a really, I mean, it is fundamentally a three-party, if not more, negotiation at a minimum between Israel, Beirut Jerusalem, Beirut, and Hezbollah What does this all mean for Lebanon's, you know, stability, security politically from a humanitarian perspective? We know Lebanon's economy has tanked over the last 10 years, less than 10 years, particularly since the huge port explosion just a few years ago.

It was in bad straits before hostilities with Israel kicked back off in earnest a few years ago. Now you see this massive occupation in the south, potentially long-term, depending on where the Israelis ultimately feel about it. What does this all leave the Lebanese state and its prospects for the future?

And where does it fit in this political, where can it look for support? Is regional support enough that it'd be able to stay afloat? Is their US engagement enough? Or is Lebanon in a more dire strait? Is it, is it the endangered actor in all this that we may not be paying enough attention to?

Joel Braunold: It's a really interesting question. I, I wanna be cautious. I, I'm not a Lebanese expert, so I can only tell you from what I'm, I'm reading and from other parts of the region. So, if there are Lebanese experts listening, you know, and I say something wrong, I apologize in advance, but-

Scott R. Anderson: Write me and we'll do a podcast with you, and we'll, we'll make up for it. Exactly.

Joel Braunold: Right. So the first thing to say is, I think it's very interesting that President Aoun basically found himself in the same position, I'd argue, as President Abbas, where you just need to be useful to the Americans if you wanna have any semblance of help from the Americans when it comes to the Israelis, right?

Abbas hasn't managed to sort of get the Israelis off his neck. But President Aoun, you know, and it was said, you know, he's chosen the path of diplomacy. Ambassador Michel Issa, our American ambassador there, has said because you've chosen the path of diplomacy with the Israelis and that you do wanna try and create a peace accords, the Trump administration is with you, and that, that, you know, they'll be there to try and push a ceasefire on the Israelis.

And you've heard Marco Rubio say directly, you know, the Israelis have no territorial ambitions on Lebanon. They don't wanna occupy things permanently. They don't wanna annex the land. And that's very important because there are definitely voices in Israel that do want to have permanent occupation and potentially do wanna annex some parts of the land, you know, as like sort of, not, not from a biblical perspective, but from a security perspective.

So having the U.S. be very clear that the borders of Lebanon are Lebanese is a big diplomatic win even to start with. But yet, I think going into the Trump casino and sitting at the table also has a risk, and we saw big pushes to try and push the Lebanese president to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu in D.C.

And there was a huge pushback, not just domestically, but regionally to prevent him from doing that. Because if he does that, one, you basically enable normalization to move forward with no progress on the Palestinian issue, and B You know, the Saudis wanna lead whatever regional integration process happens.

They don't want another country to jump first. So I think you have also been seeing Saudi really start getting involved in Lebanon and trying to push. You've seen meetings with both the speaker of the parliament and with the Lebanese president and others having meetings in Saudi Arabia, trying to reinforce the, you know, the Taif agreement that was negotiated in Saudi Arabia that w- you know, ended the civil war, and saying, "Look, part of that agreement is, you know, one, one army, one gun, and, you know, we need to find a way to get there."

And the latest ceasefire between the Lebanese and the Israelis spoke about the LAF having, you know, these bubble zones where they disarm Hezbollah and the LAF is there. So not using UN peacekeepers that the Israelis are just fed up of and everything else, but that we're gonna reinforce the LAF. By the way, at the same time, the Trump administration is cutting aid to the LAF.

So I, I don't understand, like, the, the various crosscutting currents of how any of this works. But I think the, the problem about Lebanon is, like, how far do you push? Like, the Trump, the Trump approach is pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure. And the Lebanese state is fragile, right? It's fragile because of how it's built in terms of the different ethnic minorities.

If the Israelis look like they're at war with a part of the ethnic minority in, in Lebanon, we're at war with the Shiites, you could topple over the, the, the careful balance that exists there. And we've seen that with Christi- you know, there's been reports of Christians and Sunnis throwing Shiite refugees from the south out of their homes 'cause they're worried the Israelis are gonna bomb them.

What does that do to the careful sort of mosaic of Lebanese, the Lebanese state? How does any of that work? I think if Lebanon's gonna be for Lebanon, it needs to make sure that it kicks out Iranian influence. But do you do that by instantaneously, like, you need to normalize relations with Israel, you need to get rid of your anti-normalization laws, you need to do everything now, now, now, now, now to show it?

And what does that do to a fragile state? Like, look, I don't think that the anti-normalizations in Le- laws in Lebanon are good, right? I don't think anyone who's involved in peace building think they're good. But y- you need to disappoint your community at a rate they can accept. You need to get there carefully.

And one of my biggest critiques of Israeli strategic thinking often is that they don't understand that other people have politics too. Like, if the Lebanese turned around to the Israelis and said, "You need to evacuate the settlements. You need to start dealing with settler violence in a significant way before we do this, and you need to do that right now."

You know, even if an Israeli government was willing, they'll say, "Look, it could cause a civil war in our country if we did that right now. Evacuating 500,000 people, the, what that would, would do." And they, they'd say, like, "We have politics." And in many ways, the Lebanese are saying that to them. They're like, "You're asking us to do things that are touching some of our core parts of our, our compact, and, and we could, we could fall into civil war.

Like, we can't just jump." And I think that that's a real tension about, like, yes, there are barriers to, like, normalizing relations with Israel. But when you separate it from any semblance of a Palestinian cause, you take what is a one in a thousand shot to, like, a one in a million. And, like, the risks of failure are so tremendous on the Lebanese state, and yet they can't be dominated by Tehran.

It's not, it's not viable. So they need other regional actors, Gulf actors, to come in and support them and strengthen them, both to protect them from Iran and to strengthen their state capacity, and also to help them be, like, somewhat of a blocker from the Trump administration from pushing them too quickly.

From pushing them so fast that the fragility of their state collapses given the, the places politically that the Trump administration want them to move. Even if they wanna go there, they just can't move at warp speed. It has to be, like, slowly but surely get there. I think that the tensions of that are exacerbated when The Israelis are tactically brilliant but strategically predictable.

And Hezbollah knows exactly how to get Israel to bomb parts of the country that will strengthen Hezbollah in the long term and weaken the Lebanese state, and it seems like Israel takes the cheese every time, right? And for their own dome- for Israel's own domestic. So Hezbollah in many ways is controlling the escalation ladder, which is exactly what you don't want them to do.

I think that Lebanon is stuck. That's why the Lebanese president did this huge public plea on CNN to the Israeli population saying, "We want to have peace with you eventually. This can't be through a military solution. It has to be through diplomacy." And today you had President Herzog of Israel respond, basically, "I wanna be able to drive to Beirut. I wanna have peace with you, but you need to throw the Iranians and Hezbollah out of your midst."

So everyone agrees what the problem is, but how you get there when you've got an armed actor also there who's still taking diktats from Tehran is very complicated. And just saying Lebanon do a better job clearly isn't, isn't

Sure. Great. But, but how? And so it needs that regional support and some strategic patience. At the same time, the Israeli domestic environment doesn't allow a, a government that's going to elections to give that strategic patience. So the Lebanese politics is becoming subservient to the Israeli diktats and demands, which is very dangerous.

And I think that that's part of the, again, complexity, and I think the Israeli strategic decision-makers understand this. I, I ... They don't want to collapse the Lebanese state. So I think that, like in everything, there's a push and pull between policy and politics, and how do you find that careful balance to do that?

I do think that the Israelis are trying to invest into the diplomatic process. I don't think it's a shell game for them. But they are also captured by their own domestic challenges, as are the Lebanese, and I think that the Trump administration is trying to work out and, you know, I will admirably give credit to the Trump administration trying to find a diplomatic solution here with Marco Rubio and with, like, very senior level engagement about how they can do that with regional allies to get that.

But, you know, this, this ... It's not obsession, but this desire to quickly run to the end and to get to normalization with Israel is something that is very threatening to a very fragile process that's hard enough as it is.

Scott R. Anderson: There's a lot to digest and to think about in this, in this little bit of conversation, a lot of things to watch. For the moment, we are out of time. Joel Braunold, thank you for joining us here today on the Lawfare Podcast.

Joel Braunold: Thanks so much, Scott.

Scott R. Anderson: The Lawfare Podcast is produced by the Lawfare Institute. If you want to support the show and listen ad-free, you can become a Lawfare material supporter at lawfaremedia.org/support. Supporters also get access to special events and other bonus content we don't share anywhere else. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review us wherever you listen.

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