Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - ISRAEL PREEMPTIVELY STRIKES HEZBOLLAH – with Nadav Eyal & Ronen Bergman

Episode Date: August 25, 2024

*** Share episode on X: https://tinyurl.com/bdd5bvp8 *** Early this morning, after detecting preparations by Hezbollah to launch a large-scale attack, Israel launched a powerful preemptive strike on southern Lebanon. Hours after these events took place, I was joined by Nadav Eyal and Ronen Bergman to make sense of what has taken place, and to discuss possible scenarios moving forward. Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and Senior Correspondent for Military and Intelligence Affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily. Ronen recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this war and the pre-war intelligence failures. Nadav Eyal is a columnist for Yediot. He has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news.

If we're going to go for a deal, Hezbollah is going to stop firing in the north. And then we're going to have some sort of ceasefire. This could be a ladder for them to climb off the tree. If we're not going to go to a deal, at a certain point, something will happen, like the terrible tragedy of Majlan Shams and the murder there. And this will lead to an escalation. Because this is how these wars progress. And the sides are definitely ready for an escalation

and are preparing for an escalation. And it's the US administration and the moderate Arab countries in the region, as well as parts of the Israeli government and the Israeli defense apparatus that are trying to prevent this escalation from happening. It's 8 o'clock a.m. on Sunday, August 25th in New York City. It is 3 o'clock p.m. in Israel as Israelis begin their week with Israel's most significant attack on Hezbollah since the war began more than 10 months ago, and since Hezbollah has been attacking

Israel just a mere days after October 7th. We are recording this special episode with Ronan Bergman, senior reporter for Yediot Aharonot in the New York Times, and Nadav Ayel, columnist and correspondent for Yediot Aharonot, a few hours after Israel preemptively attacked Hezbollah as they were preparing to attack Tel Aviv. Ronen, Nadav, thanks for being here. Thanks, Dan. Thanks for having us. Ronen, let me start with you. What do we know about Hezbollah's plan of attack as of now, this morning, my time, afternoon, your time? Yeah, well, much of that changed throughout the last three weeks since the two assassinations that were the reason why both Iran and Hezbollah wanted to retaliate.

One assassination of Hezbollah's chief of staff in Lebanon and one of Palestinian Hamas leaders in Tehran. So at a certain point, Iran decided that it gives all the responsibility for its aviation to Hezbollah. Hezbollah was set on a plan that was aiming at three main military targets, two at the center of Israel, one in the north of Israel, and Airbus in the north, and two intelligence bases not far away from where I'm speaking now. They were waiting until the negotiation for the hostage usage to come to an end. Then they decided to strike. They timed the launchers to 5 a.m.

Israel intercepted this plan on a preemptive strike that destroyed the launchers that were just about to be sending precision guided missiles to Israel. What were the targets inside Israel that Hezbollah was planning to activate at 5 a.m. your time? The three main targets are the headquarters of A200, that's the Israeli equivalent to the NSA, the main signal intelligence unit of the IDF, the headquarters of the Israeli Mossad, also in that vicinity, and the massive airbase in Ramat David, the center of the north of Israel. None of the missiles was fired. Of course, none reached the target, all destroyed on the ground. So just to be clear, these were supposed to be rockets or drones? What was destroyed was rockets, but they were also aiming at sending drones to the north in order to distract attention while they fire surface-to-surface

long-range ballistic missiles on these bases. Nadav, I want to bring you in here. Can you give us an overview of Israel's strike in Lebanon, what Israel's targets were, and what we know of so far in terms of the impact on Hezbollah's capabilities? So as Ronan said, most of the attack was aimed at short range launchers and launching sites. And some of it was against ballistic ground to ground missiles, and others were against launching sites of drones. Basically, Israel also destroyed in the strike not only launchers, but stockpiles. And the estimate in Israel is that it destroyed thousands of either missiles, rockets, or drones during these strikes. Most of the attack was supposed to be directed at the north, yet using heavy munition.

And the type of munition, I need to explain that Hezbollah has various short-range rockets, and most of its rockets are short-range. It has some ballistic capability, it has some long and GPS-guided rockets, but most of it is short range. I was in the IDF base in Kiryat Shmona after it was hit with just two of those. And these short range heavy loads, they can cause immense damage. And Hezbollah, of course, knows this. So the idea was to attack Israel in ways that we have not seen during this war. This is a religious day today for the Shia sect in Islam. This day is a day of mourning. So Hezbollah assessed that Israel will assess that it will not attack today.

Also, the American chief of staff was supposed to be in Israel. So that contributed to their assessment that Israel... The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Yeah, and that contributed to their assessment that Israel will not foresee an attack today. Israel, as Ronan said, intercepted that intelligence. And actually, one of the things that the IDF and the Israeli security forces are very quick to underline is that they don't see this as a full scale preemptive.

They really wanted to make sure that I understand this is not a full scale preemptive. Preemptive is if we would have done what the IDF suggested we do on October 11 at the beginning of the war. With this regard, as far as we are concerned, Hezbollah already began its attack on Israel. It facilitated these launchers. You know, they had an automatic command to shoot at 5 a.m. And they were already beginning, as far as we are concerned, to shoot. And this was actually a preventive while the attack was happening. So it's very important

for them to underline that it wasn't preemptive, I think, from diplomatic reasons. And also because many Israelis, for instance, when I wrote preemptive in English, many Israelis were quite angry, saying, what's preemptive about this? We've been attacked on October 8. We've been continuously being attacked. There's nothing preemptive about this if they were supposed to launch immediately. I find this, you know, I understand this nuances, but, you know, just formally speaking, linguistically speaking, it's a preemptive

because Israel thought that Hezbollah is going to do something and it attacked first. And this is a highly successful operation from the vibe that we're getting now back from intelligence. According to security officials in Israel, what they're saying is, again, thousands of artifacts have been destroyed, hundreds of launchers have been destroyed. And if this shooting towards the center of Israel, towards these army bases would have happened, would have caused casualties, it would have forced Israel to respond towards Beirut. And that could have escalated very quickly

to a regional war. I want to ask you, Ronan, why Hezbollah struck now? Why now? And I want to specifically peg this up against the backdrop of the hostage negotiations and also what I alluded to in the introduction of my previous episode, that the Democratic National Convention taking place last week was also a factor. I think the question that should be asked is why didn't they attack before? Because they announced they had a reason. As Nadav said, Israel killed practically their chief of staff, though there's no such job. So he was described as a military advisor to Nasrallah,

but he was coordinating all military forces of Hezbollah, and he was also actually running the forces and coordinating everything. So his loss and the assassination in Tehran were calling for revenge. And then it started to get delayed for different reasons. But the last part was because there was the negotiation over the hostages. I wouldn't be risking a lot of money

if I would be betting on the chances that the US has called the summit in Doha last week because of, of course, trying to advance the hostage deal, but also trying to put pressure on both Iran and Hezbollah not to do anything while the momentum is taking place. Can I barge in? I'm going to barge in for a second. And also not doing anything when the Democratic Convention is still there. And I'm not saying this completely speculatively. I'm saying this based on sources that are saying that this is their interpretation, the Israeli sources, this is their interpretation to a lot of pressure that was pushed in order to have an

appearance of the momentum during a very critical week, politically speaking, in the United States, that has led so far to very little in terms of the negotiation. And the Israeli negotiating team just didn't understand what the Americans are doing. And their conclusion was that this is internal politics in the United States. Maybe Ronan, you can pick it up from there. Sorry for interrupting you. Yesterday, I wrote to Hezbollah, they understood that this part of the negotiation, this momentum is going nowhere, that negotiation is stuck, that the US is basically trying to keep it alive in order to delay the retaliatory attack. And then the negotiation

itself in no way moved forward since the beginning of Doha throughout the last week. And now there was not a single point, no advancement. The negotiation is stuck, even if the White House says that they are still optimistic. And I just want to put a finer point on this. Were the talks used because there was this assumption and Hezbollah? Or were the talks used? You saw during the week of the convention, many speakers and many politicians who weren't on the main stage were saying, look, we're just hoping these ceasefire talks proceed. We hope the hostages get returned. So there's there's a process they could point to. So any criticism of whichever parties politicians were motivated to criticize could be subordinated to, look, there's a process going on right now. Let's let the process play out. So it was, I could argue that the talks served two purposes. One, they created a pressure

point on Iran and Hezbollah not to strike while the talks were going on, and they gave political actors in the United States something to point to as like, look, there's this process going on, let's let it play out and let's hope for the best. Is it either of those, both of those? Look, this is why I said I can bet and I think I'm not going to lose, but it's not something I can vet. Israeli officials, and I'll get to this in a minute, Israeli officials thought that the Americans are behaving odd. They tried to explain that to themselves, and they said the U.S. was trying to delay the strike,

but they also wanted to get some space for the DNC, for the convention. But fact remains, the Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed, once the talks last Thursday ended, before he went to brief Hezbollah, he called the Iranian foreign minister and said, listen, we have advanced. Anything you do could harm the negotiation. Please refrain. And we know from intelligence that it had an effect the other point is that when the secretary of state antony blinken came to to israel israeli defense establishment was sure that he is there to put harsh pressure on benjamin netanyahu to agree to take out the new demands that he put in the negotiation that are basically taking the negotiation nowhere. And everybody was shocked when he came out of the room and he said, Benjamin Netanyahu accepted everything we wanted. It's now all on the shoulders of Hamas. And they thought that Israeli defense establishment, they said Blinken just

sabotaged the deal because they were sort of hoping that he will get Prime Minister Netanyahu give up on a few points. But what the situation now is that the Secretary Blinken aligned with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He said Israel accepted everything with what they call the bridging proposal that they know there's no chance in the world that Hamas will accept. And it didn't. And so we are stuck basically in the same place

where we have been before the Doha summit. Nadav, I want to ask you, in terms of Hezbollah and how Hezbollah looks right now in the region, Hezbollah has announced publicly that this retaliatory strike for the, you know, for Israel's operation against Fuad Shulka has been completed. While we are sitting here recording this, Ben-Gurion Airport was closed, but now has been reopened. That was pretty quick. Israel's foreign minister sent a message to ambassadors.

The foreign minister issued a message to ambassadors that Israel is not interested in a full-scale war, that this was an act of self-defense. So I guess the question is, was this a preemptive strike or really just a basic preventative strike? Meaning it was, what I'm trying to get at is, this was just another tactical move in a series of tactical moves since October 7th, but nothing strategic has really changed? So the answer is that this was indeed tactical, but it might have strategic meaning, and I'll explain. It was tactical in the sense that it was preventive. Israel knew that this is going to happen, so it operated as far as the Israelis are concerned. And as far as Hezbollah is concerned,

Hezbollah's response already begun. Hezbollah is not blaming Israel with aggression here. It's not saying Israel escalated this. They're saying we finalized the first stage of our response for Fuad Shukr, whatever that means. And listen to the Nasrallah speech, Nasrallah is the leader of Hezbollah, at 6 p.m. Middle East time, and see what happens then.

But basically what they're saying, they're not blaming Israel for this attack, because they're saying we have responded and Israel is lying about this. Now, it's Hezbollah that's lying. And here's the strategic meaning, Dan. They have been very much surprised by Israel's precise intelligence, which Ronan just complimented in what he said. And Ronan is a very serious and seasoned reporter covering intelligence issues in Yediot HaGonot in the New York Times for many years. So if he's complimenting the Israeli intelligence, you know, take it from him, they deserve that compliments. Okay, doesn't do that too often. And I think he's right. Because let me tell you something that people usually forget about this war.

Armies always prepare to the previous war that they had. Now, the previous war that Israel had was the war in Lebanon in 2006. This was the most serious confrontation that Israel had. And the Israeli defense apparatus wasn't happy with the results, although they have brought, you know, more than a decade of relative quiet to the northern side of Israel, talking about the 2006 war. And although there was some sort of deterrence that was built by Israel's and the IDF response, this is not deemed as a successful war by the Israeli defense apparatus. And they've been preparing for a war with Hezbollah since 2006. And most of Israel's military resources,

besides tackling the Iranian threat and continuing the control of the West Bank, has been really addressing what will happen if we escalate to another war in Lebanon, a third Lebanon war, the first one 1982, the second one 2006, and a third one. And they have built an impressive operation of intelligence and of military operational capabilities to tackle the possibility of another war with Lebanon. And to that extent, you see again and again,

the Israeli defense apparatus, the IDF, basically saying, let us act in Lebanon. We know what we're doing. We want to do a preemptive against Hezbollah. And they have a reason for that. And what they proved to Nasrallah in this attack is that they know much more than he assumed that the IDF knows. And not everything can be published.

For instance, you don't see videos of these launching areas in Lebanon being publicized by Hezbollah or Lebanese TV. You don't see the amount of destruction there. And there are reasons for that. Israel took Nasrallah by surprise at the targets and at the verified intelligence and the fact that Israel knew that it's going to happen. But it's more than that. It's where are not only the launchers, but also the stockpiles? And how do you cut down communications and other issues, very technical, but extremely important, that Israel has the upper hand here? Basically, when the other side is planning this kind of an attack, the sort that we have seen in Ukraine, and also attempted by Hezbollah's Lebanon, but also by Iran, American and Israeli intelligence have the upper hand.

It's when it's a ground assault by a small terrorist organization like Hamas, and not a ballistic or a rocket issue, that we see a completely different story, right? And everyone was taken by surprise. But look at April, Iran, look at the invasion of Ukraine, and it's a very much smaller scale. Look at what happened right now. Intelligence has changed. The capabilities of intelligence have changed. And when you want to use electronics in your attack, the way that Hezbollah was trying to use, or Iran was trying to use, or Russia was trying to use, Israel and Western intelligence

have a lot to play with. Nadav, in terms of the reaction from the Israelis who live in the north, and the tens of thousands of them who've had to leave the north since October 7th, or the days after October 7th, and they're now basically living spread out in hotel rooms and temporary housing through the central part of Israel, but their children have now missed an entire school year. They're on the cusp, I think, of missing another, a second school year. They're living in places that are very unfamiliar to them. They're not in their homes. Their businesses have shut down. These towns in the north are like ghost towns now. And this has been going on for 11 months. Those Israelis look at this action and say, what? Was there a hope that this escalation would lead to something more strategic,

more dramatic that would actually create a pathway to them being able to be secure enough to return home. Or they look at this and say, that didn't happen. We're actually where we were yesterday, which is we still don't have a clear vision as to when we can return home. So they absolutely say what you said in your last sentence dan and they say this with an extreme anger and you see the leaders of the municipalities in the north they just issued a notice saying they're disconnecting their conversations their relations with the government until the government gives them an answer and that has a lot to do with the reporting about Hezbollah wanting to hit Tel Aviv or the central area of Israel as the reasoning for Israel preemptive strike. So their argument,

Dan, is you don't care about the north. You know, when the north is being bombarded for months on end and when people have to leave their houses, and all of these areas are destroyed, you don't care. But if you think it might escalate to a regional war, which is just a code name for you guys in Gush Dan, in the Tel Aviv area getting hit, then you hit these targets of Hezbollah, and then everything is business as usual, which means that nothing has changed for the north. This is the argument made, not by me, by the leaders of the municipalities, both Likud and others in the north against the government right now. And they're very angry at this. And the reason they're angry is that they were overjoyed during the night. I spoke with one of them. They're saying, now we're doing it. You know, we're trying to take out,

to eliminate the Hezbollah threat. We're trying to restore deterrence. We have been waiting for so long. These are people who have lost their businesses. Some of them still living basically in hotels. They're not going to come back then. They're not going to come back in a few days to the school year.

That means that you're missing two school years in these areas. Many of these people are talking about leaving their kibbutzim or leaving their towns and never returning. They're starting to consider, you know, buying a house somewhere else because their children need stability. So this is the type of anger that you're hearing. I have been many times to the north since the beginning of the war. I've been in places like Kiryat Shmona and Shlomi

that usually vote for the right wing or for the Likud, not usually, always vote for the right wing and the Likud, and I've been in the kibbutzim there. And the anger towards the government, and towards, by the way, also the defense establishment, the IDF, for not doing more. And you also see this fraction within the chief of staff. So you see there a camp within the IDF that is continuously saying, Dan, we need to hit Hezbollah. We know how to hit Hezbollah hard. We need to have a wide preemptive strike or a wide strike against

Hezbollah. We're going to fight a war, a wide war against Hezbollah anyway. Why not do it now? So you have this camp within the IDF and you see the others within the IDF saying, we need to finish up with what's happening in the south. And if we go into a war with Hezbollah, it will probably end the same way as an Amos-Hochstein agreement that might be brought, you know, in a couple of months. So why do we need that war in order to reach the same place to begin with? And I think this is probably the position of the chief of staff himself, Herzliya Levy, the general leading the chief of staff. So this kind of argument is right now boiling in Israel. It's a huge success for the Israeli defense forces.

It's a success for the government, but it's flipping on them in the last hours because people in the north are saying, is this it? Are you done? And this is the reason why the prime minister during our recording right now made a statement saying this is only the first phase of what we are going to do in the north. This is a statement by Netanyahu in the last hour of our recording. This is the only first phase, he says.

And the reason he's saying this is because of the criticism. Now, of course, people in the north are saying, you know, what does it mean, the first phase? You know, you've been promising us to return to our houses since the beginning of the war. It's not happened. They're demanding more. And we'll have to see how this develops. But there's a lot of pressure at the government to do something with the North. And I should say something that Gadi Eisenkot, the former chief of staff, always, always underlines in every conversation, and that is that there is no formal goal of the war

approved by the cabinet as to the northern border of Israel. So the cabinet never ordered the IDF in a formal goal, a cabinet decision, take out the threat to the north or anything like it, because as far as they are concerned, this is actually an escalation of the war in the south. So he's saying we need to begin by saying, take out this threat. And Isaacot is a very much general that focused on the north during his reign as the chairman of the Israeli chief of staff.

Nadav just explained the split inside the IDF. I did not run a poll through the major generals or the chief of staff, but my impression is that there's a vast, vast majority against a preemptive, a big preemptive strike in Lebanon. Most of the office in these circumstances, in this situation, they say the IDF by nature,

even if not after one war, one year of war, is not prepared to fight on two fronts. It's prepared to fight offensive on one, defensive on the other, as it does, but not two fronts. Second, they lack some of the gear, some of the ammunition, even after President Biden took out the so-called bureaucratic hurdles that delayed the shipments of munitions and missiles, etc. Third, the IDF is somewhat worn down after a year and it needs some time to refresh and regrouping. Fourth, they believe that first, the war in Gaza needs to end. Nasrallah has repletely said that once the war ends, he will stop shooting. Now, that does not solve the problem with Lebanon and with Hezbollah,

but it should give some time for Amos Hochstein to run a possible negotiation with Lebanon and with Hezbollah. And maybe, I don't know if it will succeed. I'm optimistic, but that's my nature. And sometimes it distorts my ability to assess the future. But I hope that he will come up with a solution that will ensure the safety of the civilians in the northern communities of Israel and allow them to go back,

not just for the time of the Sokol ceasefire, but just forever. And in any case, it will give the IDF, even if it fails, even if that the IDF needs to move into an all-out war, it will give the IDF time to regroup, to have a little bit of rest, to focus on the north, collect enough intelligence and start this when the IDF decides to do, not when Nasrallah and Hamas are playing all sorts of their own moves. And I believe that it all, all of it, everything that we talk about, the release of the hostages, the end of Hezbollah shooting from Lebanon, beginning of some kind of political discourse with Hezbollah,

re-examining a strike on Hezbollah, all of this starts with the first. There's one point, there's one move, there's one decision that needs to be taken. That decision by the Israeli prime minister is to sign the hostage deal. This is the beginning of the new page of the history of the Middle East. And until this is not done, there will not be a page turned to that new era. Ronen, the U.S. has been steadily deploying forces to the region over the past few weeks. What are your sources telling you about the U.S. involvement from a military perspective and obviously an intelligence sharing perspective behind the scenes in the events of the last

24 hours? I think the presence of the U.S. is important. They were not flying their squadrons in order to take down the missiles because the missiles did not leave ground because Israel destroyed them onto the ground but of course the U.S. presence in defense but also in offense once the the Pentagon issued the statement that they are sending a striking submarine this is an offensive weapon it has no defensive capabilities or purposes whatsoever the Iran Iranians got that, and Israeli and American intelligence immediately picked up the echoes of that submarine being sent on its way to the region. The Iranians are saying, well, maybe we should not get into this. Just positioning these weapons,

these submarines, aircraft carriers, that had a significant effect. Okay. Rodan, I know you have to go deal with something urgently we don't ever want to stand in the way of you and your reporting so when important sources call we want to get you off this podcast and go continue with your work nadav will do double duty here and carry it thank you bye dan, Dan. Bye, Nadav. See you around then. Nadav, just picking up on something both of you have spoken to, it is reasonable to assume that if this were up to Israel alone, this would have been more of a strategic operation to actually remove the threat from the north rather than what we have. To what extent was that decision made as a result of pressure from

the United States? I know you and I have talked at length about the decision in the days after October 7th for Israel not to engage in a preemptive strike in the north, and there were a variety of factors. Both Netanyahu and Gantz and Eisenkant did not believe it made sense that it was feasible at that stage to conduct a major preemptive strike in the north that would have strategic implications. In terms of what Israel's done now, how much was U.S. influence a factor in what appears to be a limited strike by Israel? Look, Dan, the U.S. is continuously pressuring Israel not to expand the war. But specifically in this case, in this intelligence was received by both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. And I think the Americans, judging from their response till now, and from the damage that could have happened if Hezbollah would have had its plans implemented, are right now quite content with what happened last night, what Israel did

with this preemptive last night. Because if Hezbollah would have shot at Tel Aviv or the central areas of Israel, and again, it's my impression that it was supposed to be rather symbolic. Most of the fire was supposed to be directed to the north, they didn't, Hezbollah itself didn't want this to expand to a regional war, then Israel would have had to respond to Beirut in a targeted manner, and this could escalate. I think basically that the IDF in Israel solved a big problem for the US administration

with this preemptive, and the proof, as they say in the UK, is in the pudding. And you can see that Hezbollah is saying that basically the first phase of the response is over. So they're using this as an off-ramp to say we have responded and to save face. Now, we need to really listen to what Nasrallah has to say, the leader of Hezbollah has to say at 6pm. Usually, when he makes threats, they're not empty. And we need to hear exactly what he's saying. But if this is the case, it's exactly the scenario in which a targeted strike with a very sophisticated intelligence can actually prevent a wider war. And this is right now the

interest of the United States. Now, if Israel would have come tomorrow morning to the US, for instance, after Majdal Shams, as I mentioned earlier, the murder of these children there, and would have said, look, we're going to go to a full scale war with Hezbollah, I think it would have faced tremendous pressure not to do so, because the US doesn't want this war to expand and escalate in the Middle East. And this is something that the White House has clearly stated. But your question is a good excuse for me to say something general that I have said on your podcast, I think in December. And I'm going to say this again. It is the fact that Israelis in the northern part of Israel are being attacked continuously since October 8. While there is no excuse of an occupation in

southern Lebanon, after Israel left Lebanon in the year 2000, and has obtained a UN Security Council decision saying that it has returned to the internationally recognized border. And after that, Hezbollah has not disarmed, has not decided to become a political party, but rather has been arming itself, preparing for a war, launching a war in 2006, publishing videos in which it says that it's going to occupy parts of the Galilee, building tunnels that were exposed by Israel, having that war in Lebanon in 2006, now preparing for another war.

Now, in October 8, less than 24 hours after Israel was savagely attacked by those Hamas murderous units infiltrating Israel, attacking Israel again. And the international community is like, yeah, you know, you need to finish that war in Gaza and then everything's going to be great. Everything's just going to be fantastic again. You'll have peace in your northern border. It's not answering a very basic question that Israelis are asking, and region. But you want us to compromise on territory. You want us to have political agreements. We have unilaterally redrawn from southern Lebanon in 2000. And the problem just got bigger. Now, I think that if the international community, mainly the US, can't answer the Israelis to that point, You know, it's very difficult to see how this area sees more peace and security and more

agreements, you know, between Israelis and Palestinians, between Israelis and Syrians and Lebanese. That's a major question. And nobody cares around the world about what's happening in the north unless it might escalate to a regional war. So as far as the world is concerned, you know, yeah, Hezbollah can bomb, I don't know, a quarter of the area of Israel, or a fifth of the area of Israel, continuously for 10 months, and dozens of thousands will lose their homes. And as far as the UN, this is just because of Gaza,

or some sort of slogan like that. And that doesn't convince anyone. And as the UN, this is just because of Gaza or some sort of slogan like that. And that doesn't convince anyone. And by the way, it doesn't convince even Hezbollah. What Hezbollah is saying that, you know, that they can do that and that the response of Israel would be harsh. Israel had much more attacks against Hezbollah in the last 10 months than Hezbollah had against Israel because Israel is continuously escalating its responses to Hezbollah in order to deter it. But what Hezbollah is seeing is that for them, they have some sort of legitimacy for this axis, for what they label as the axis of

resistance. And this legitimacy is granted by an international community that sees these attacks in Lebanon, if it all talks about them, as something that is on the sideline of the war in Gaza, instead of seeing this as an act of war coming from an independent country, Lebanon, a failing country, but an independent country, a failed state, but an independent one, against Israel. And nobody that I know in the international sphere, no leader in the international sphere, I didn't hear any speech, maybe you did, of them just addressing this issue. Now, many of Israel's critics in its post-October 7th defensive war it's been fighting argue that underlying all of this is a territorial dispute and a dispute about self-determination of the Palestinian

people that, again, I'm highly skeptical of those arguments, and I don't believe they are argued in good faith. But that is what many point to. You can't even point to a territorial dispute. You can't point to self-determination as a basis for the conflict. There's nothing there. It is what you are saying, which is an act of war against a country you want wiped off the map and therefore making part of that country uninhabitable. For what? Just as a means to advancing your war aims, not to solve any geopolitical or self-determination goals of the party launching the attacks. It's also proving that this is not only a Palestinian issue. Now, even those of us who think that there needs to be a political compromise and a territorial compromise, nobody can ignore this axis led by Iran across the region. They do operate,

I don't want to say as one, but they operate in cooperation and solidarity. And that means that this is not only about the Palestinians. And that also means that it's not only about Israel controlling what they label as Arab land, as Israel controlled in southern Lebanon. It's also about issues like fundamentalism and terrorism and an attempt to change the region. And what I am saying is shared by my Saudi, Emirati, Bahraini, sometimes Palestinian friends. They see that. But the international community has this catchphrase, which is it's all about the Palestinian issue. And if you solve that, everything will fall into place. And they disregard, you know, the Charter of Hamas. They disregard Hezbollah. Hezbollah's claim to fame is that it will fight against Israel until Israel is destroyed. This is not an interpretation. It is what Hezbollah is saying. And I think that if we do not recognize that, we would not be able to make a strong argument for agreements in the region until we understand we need to tackle somehow, by deterrence or otherwise, Iran and its proxies.

And Hezbollah is, of course, its most powerful proxy. And it just tried to ignite the Middle East. Maybe it wouldn't have worked. Maybe it would have been only symbolic, that attack against the central part of Israel. But just imagine, Dan, what would have happened if one of these rockets would have landed on a neighborhood not far from one of these army bases in the center of Tel Aviv, how Israel would have needed to respond, what the U.S. would have said in that regard, how this could have escalated to a war. This is a terrorist organization as designated by both the European Union and the United States. These things are just shoved aside. You know, we'll deal with them later.

This is the kind of an approach you see in the international sphere. And that's always a mistake. Now, this doesn't always need to lead to an assumption or a conclusion that you need to fight, you know, a big war against them. And that's the way to tackle with this. But the first phase is just not ignoring the problem and recognizing that it's a crisis in the Middle East, this axis, and you need to have a strategy in order to deal with it. I completely agree. Nadav, before we wrap, I just want to spend a little bit of time, and I know this is speculative in terms of scenarios going forward, in terms of the various players. First question is Hezbollah. What do you think their next move is? And I know it's hard to

answer that question. Apropos of your And I know it's hard to answer that question. Apropos of your previous comment, it's hard to answer that question without assessing what Iran wants to do next. So why don't we bottle those up? What do you think happens next with Hezbollah and Iran? I think they're going to look for a much more targeted response that will look more like a terror attack than sort of an aerial attack against Israel. And they might try to attack maybe Israeli positions outside of Israel, like embassies

like they have done before. We need to wait for that speech by Nasrallah we see what he says. But basically, I don't think it's over yet. I think that what we're hearing from Western intelligence is that they are very much resolved to get people killed, basically, as a response. That this time, it's not about the symbolic nature of a response. We shot 300 rockets and nothing happened. Like in April, with the projectiles, you know, shot by Iran. No, the Israeli intelligence is picking up a desire to have casualties in Israel or Israeli casualties. So it will hurt this time. And I don't think that

they're over and done with to that extent. But the big question, Dan, and Ronan has said that, if we're going to go for a deal, Hezbollah is going to stop firing in the north, and then we're going to have some sort of ceasefire. This could be a ladder for them to climb off the tree. Will this change the nature of the relations in the north? I'm not sure, but it will bring some quiet. If we're not going to go to a deal, at a certain point, something will happen, like the terrible tragedy of Majlan Shams and the murder there, or something else, and this will lead to an escalation. Because this is how these wars progress, right? So either you're going to have something to stop it, or this will escalate

even more. And the sides are definitely ready for an escalation and are preparing for an escalation. And it's the US administration and the moderate Arab countries in the region, as well as parts of the Israeli government and the Israeli defense apparatus that are trying to prevent this escalation from happening. Before we go, Nadav, what does all this mean for the hostage negotiations? I know you don't have a crystal ball into the future, but in the days and weeks ahead? So the hostage negotiations, first of all, the team is in Cairo. So that's the interesting thing about the Middle East. In the middle of the night, Israel time or the US time, there is a feeling that the entire

Middle East is on the verge of tremendous escalation of sorts and a terrible, terrible set of events. And then in the morning, the Israeli team flies to Cairo, the capital of the most important Arab country that has peace with Israel in order to have actually negotiations with Hamas on a deal. So this is part of the lunacy of the Middle East. And the deal doesn't look too good right now, from several reasons that Ronan mentioned, and I don't want to reiterate, but basically, it doesn't seem that there is a lot of agreement between Hamas and Israel on core issues right now. The White House is pushing very, very hard now to get something done. And here's a newsflash. They're going to push Bibi much, much harder. They're going to push Netanyahu much harder.

So a lot of pressure is going to be put on Netanyahu. We didn't see that in previous weeks. I don't know why. Maybe domestic politics in the US, maybe other reasons. But now the pressure is turning on Israel, at least in the next 48 to 72 hours. And then we see what happens. And I'm not going to prophesize as to something that's going to happen in the Middle East for the next half an hour. So I'm not going to do that for the rest of the week

or months ahead. Fair enough. Nadav, we will leave it there. And thank you to you. And thank you to Ronan for being here for the time that he could. And I'm sure we'll be back in touch in the days ahead. Okay. Thank you.