The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW LIVE： Realpolitik #50 ｜ The War Resumes

00:00:00.480 Hello and welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host Firas Maudad and today we're

00:00:07.380 going to be talking a little bit about the resumed war in the Middle East. Does it actually

00:00:11.860 escalate more? Does it subside and Trump succeeds in reimposing the ceasefire? What are the prospects

00:00:17.960 for a deal and what kicked this whole thing off to begin with? Let's start a little bit with the

00:00:25.680 last question and the incentives of the two sides, especially Iran and Hezbollah and Israel

00:00:34.120 actually, to escalate the conflict again. So the first bit, if you look at the map here,

00:00:40.840 is that the Israelis are trying to establish a new buffer zone in Lebanon. They've announced

00:00:48.560 this yellow line all over southern Lebanon that is intended to become a buffer zone between them 0.89

00:00:56.080 and Hezbollah. Here it reaches the Litani River, which runs along the border between the dark red 0.87

00:01:05.600 area and the light red area. And the idea in an ideal world for the Israelis might be to connect

00:01:14.540 to the Christian town of Yazine here. And then that means that they can fully intervene in

00:01:20.420 Lebanon's politics. And that would be a restoration to the line of control that existed in Lebanon 0.92

00:01:25.640 before 2000, when the Israelis occupied a pretty big chunk of South Lebanon with the aim of just

00:01:33.720 keeping Hezbollah away from the border. Remember, Hezbollah was created because Israel invaded. 0.62

00:01:41.440 it's a long story but let's not get into that and so the israelis are occupying bits and pieces of

00:01:46.800 territory along the border they're trying to stay away from some of the christian villages like

00:01:51.520 ramesh here um but the idea is to clear hezbollah out and hezbollah has been receiving a pretty bad

00:02:00.160 beating all things considered it's been fighting back and inflicting some casualties and it's

00:02:06.480 decided to sacrifice some territory in the belief that over a long enough time period it will turn

00:02:16.080 this into a war of attrition and will therefore be able to beat the israelis and force them back

00:02:23.120 but in the meantime the israelis are actually escalating quite badly

00:02:27.120 and they were trying to implement the dahi doctrine now the dahi doctrine for those of you

00:02:34.560 who don't know this is a israeli military strategy that was developed in 2006 which basically says

00:02:43.280 that in response to an attack by an unstate armed group like hezbollah or whoever or hamas for that

00:02:50.640 matter the israeli reaction is to absolutely blast to smithereens the main urban areas that

00:02:58.880 the enemy depends on and in lebanon's case this area is called dahi which is the arabic name

00:03:06.160 for this the southern suburb of beirut um which is predominantly shia where hezbollah has some

00:03:12.880 of its headquarters this is a bit of a misrepresentation it expands that area more

00:03:18.160 than it should actually it stops along this line here it doesn't include this area but whatever

00:03:23.360 and for the israelis the strategy is to just blow up everything in these urban areas and

00:03:31.920 by inflicting this mass civilian suffering win the war if they can't win against the insurgents

00:03:40.020 and this is what was implemented in gaza and this is an evolution of the israeli strategy that was

00:03:46.760 pursued in the 1993 and in the 1996 wars in Lebanon, which basically obliterated civilian

00:03:54.260 areas right along the border. They found that this wasn't enough, so they went fully to the urban

00:03:59.900 areas. And the Israelis wanted to do this again, essentially. And they wanted to start blowing up 0.92

00:04:07.780 the southern suburb of Beirut in full. And Trump said, don't do it. And the Iranians said,

00:04:15.600 if you do it, we are going to start launching attacks against Israel directly in support of

00:04:22.380 Hezbollah. So this is the context in which all of this was happening. Basically, the Iranians

00:04:31.600 imposed a red line on the Americans and on Israel and said that if Israel returns to the Dahi 0.53

00:04:40.800 doctrine and starts obliterating the urban areas where most Shia Lebanese live, then

00:04:47.560 the Iranians will retaliate directly. 0.81

00:04:50.860 Why did the Iranians draw this line?

00:04:53.640 Well, because so long as there is a major urban area close to the port of Beirut here 0.86

00:05:02.400 that allows Hezbollah to access weapons, move them to first the southern suburb and then 0.66

00:05:10.700 through the mountains into southern Lebanon, then Hezbollah can keep fighting, and Hezbollah

00:05:17.220 can keep trying to regain these territories that were lost to the Israelis, even if this

00:05:22.780 becomes a 5-10 year war of attrition, with the aim of basically repeating what happened

00:05:31.800 in the year 2000, when after 18 years of fighting, Hezbollah eventually forced Israel out.

00:05:40.740 Again, what you have to think about is that the partisans in this conflict are all thinking

00:05:50.160 in generational terms, and they're thinking about the next 10 years and the next 15 years.

00:05:55.800 They're not thinking about the next quarter. 0.93

00:05:58.460 Whereas on the other hand, if the Israelis continue this policy where they're blowing up major Shia 0.64

00:06:04.540 cities like Tir in the south, Nabati here also in the south, and they blow up the southern suburb,

00:06:12.380 then essentially the Shia civilians of Lebanon have nowhere to go. And they are essentially 1.00

00:06:18.860 ethnically cleansed and they leave the country and they're defeated. So Iran's intervention 0.97

00:06:24.780 was intended to save Hezbollah, to allow it to live to fight another day. Whereas the Israeli 0.94

00:06:31.340 objective, which is now shared with a portion of the Lebanese government, is to completely break 0.69

00:06:36.860 Hezbollah with no regard to what happens to the Shia and to, if necessary, plunge Lebanon into a

00:06:44.460 civil war between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah. And this then becomes an excuse for the Israelis 0.92

00:06:51.900 to intervene further in Lebanon, to strengthen themselves, to link up with the Christian

00:06:56.140 communities. And as we said, I think in the last episode, from the Christian communities,

00:07:01.340 they get access to the Alawite communities, and they become the dominant power over the 0.83

00:07:07.260 entire Eastern Mediterranean, which is a problem for Turkey, etc., etc. That's not the conversation

00:07:13.980 right now. But what happened was that the Iranians set out a red line, and the Israelis decided

00:07:21.260 that they will test the red line with the explicit objective of either making sure that they can be 0.55

00:07:32.060 given a full free hand in Lebanon to do whatever they wanted or to draw the Americans back into

00:07:39.900 the war and force another escalation with the Iranians and therefore gain a free hand in Lebanon 0.68

00:07:47.100 and in the rest of the region. So what's competing here are two projects, both of them seeking 0.84

00:07:53.900 regional hegemony. The Iranians are trying to get their own empire, and so are the Israelis,

00:08:01.100 and indeed so are the Turks. If the Israelis can force the Iranians to separate from Lebanon, 0.78

00:08:09.980 even if there's a deal with Iran, that is a little bit acceptable. But if they can't force 0.91

00:08:15.580 a separation from Lebanon, that is the worst case scenario for the Israelis. And on the other hand,

00:08:24.300 if the Iranians give up Lebanon, it discredits them in the eyes of the Houthis in Yemen and of

00:08:33.660 the militias in Iraq and possibly in the eyes of their supporters in Bahrain and in Kuwait and in

00:08:39.980 and Saudi Arabia, and it becomes a major defeat for the Iranians. So Lebanon ended up becoming 0.55

00:08:47.500 the center of this conflict because every side needs to be able to say that we held on to our

00:08:56.220 gains in Lebanon in order to win. And because of the Israelis' experience fighting Hezbollah from

00:09:04.000 the 1980s to 2000, and eventually having to withdraw, and Hezbollah being able to impose

00:09:10.720 deterrence on Israel from the year 2000, 2006 to 2023, they don't want to go back to the status

00:09:18.940 quo. So what's changed is that both sides have become much more hardline in their positions.

00:09:26.660 And so the Americans, being largely unaware of any of this stuff, what they were trying to do

00:09:33.180 was to just keep the ceasefire with Iran going

00:09:37.900 in order to stay away from a resumption of the conflict

00:09:43.200 because it's become very, very clear

00:09:46.640 that they don't want to get back into a war.

00:09:51.900 But the Israelis do, 0.67

00:09:53.900 and they don't even want to ceasefire with Lebanon.

00:09:56.940 And that's why a couple of days ago,

00:09:59.700 the Israelis conduct an airstrike in South Lebanon

00:10:02.860 killing a brigadier general in the Lebanese army.

00:10:07.180 Now, the Lebanese army exists on paper.

00:10:11.200 Its actual function is not to defend the borders of Lebanon.

00:10:14.560 That's something that it's practically never done.

00:10:17.340 Its actual function is to maintain internal peace

00:10:20.600 between the different religious communities.

00:10:23.220 It's a domestically oriented force, not a foreign oriented force.

00:10:28.180 The one time it fought to secure Lebanon,

00:10:30.360 It was in partnership with Hezbollah, and it was against the jihadis that were coming in from Syria. 0.91

00:10:36.840 And it performed badly, and it would have failed were it not for Hezbollah backing it.

00:10:43.240 The issue is, however, is that now because the negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, 0.98

00:10:49.760 the Lebanese army is being set up to take the task of dismantling the weapons of Hezbollah,

00:10:55.600 which is what the israelis want and which is what officially the lebanese state wants but the lebanese

00:11:02.620 state is weak and incapacitated and the current people who are running it were literally hand

00:11:09.400 picked by the united states uh the president and the prime minister they they've got no popular

00:11:15.260 mandate no popular base of their of their own they were handpicked by the united states

00:11:20.020 and so they're risking an internal conflict with Hezbollah and the Israelis know this

00:11:25.880 and it seems that the general that was targeted was somebody who was heavily involved in the

00:11:34.560 coordination mechanism between Israel and Lebanon and the United States which is the mechanism

00:11:43.060 that keeps the ceasefire nominally functioning between Israel and Lebanon. And by killing this

00:11:50.620 guy, the Israelis are sending a message to the Lebanese state and to Hezbollah that even though 0.74

00:11:56.800 they're negotiating under American auspices to achieve a ceasefire, the Israelis don't really

00:12:03.420 want it. The Israelis don't actually want a ceasefire. So not only did they attack the southern

00:12:10.220 suburb of Beirut to test Iran's red line, they also bombed the representative of the Lebanese

00:12:16.860 state who was supposed to be their partner in dismantling Hezbollah. And the reason for that 0.55

00:12:23.260 is that any ceasefire for it to be signed by the Lebanese is going to involve Israel having to

00:12:29.160 withdraw from Lebanese territory. This is not what the Israelis want. They want to settle in South

00:12:34.440 Lebanon and expand their territory, which, you know, is the traditional way of making war before

00:12:41.020 World War II. You go and you seize territory and you kick out the people you don't like and you

00:12:46.760 settle it and it becomes yours. Like, this is not that unusual. But everybody's pretending that,

00:12:55.800 you know, we are living under international law when we're in the law of the jungle as we always

00:13:01.740 where. So the Israelis don't want a ceasefire. But the Iranians also have a reason to escalate.

00:13:10.540 So Hezbollah has a reason to want the Iranians to escalate because it's getting hammered 0.80

00:13:14.700 and it needs the Iranians to protect it and save it. The Israelis want to escalate because they 0.97

00:13:21.820 want to dominate all of Lebanon and that becomes a pathway to dominating the entire East Mediterranean 0.99

00:13:28.760 coast, the Iranians also have an interest in escalation. I just want to be clear about that 1.00

00:13:34.060 so that nobody tells me in the comments that I'm picking on Israel or what have you. And the reason

00:13:38.820 the Iranians want an escalation is because currently under the ceasefire, Iranian oil

00:13:43.920 exports are falling apart because of the American blockade on Iran and because that blockade is also

00:13:51.420 targeting ships that the Iranians use to export oil, and the Iranians need oil exports for their

00:13:59.320 economy to function. They need to find a way around it. Previously, when it was just sanctions, 0.99

00:14:06.140 what the Iranians could do was basically evade the sanctions, offer their oil at a pretty big 0.71

00:14:12.280 discount, and you will find some enterprising shipper who's willing to break the law and sell

00:14:19.960 Iranian oil. And the Chinese helped with that. The Malaysians helped. The Indonesians helped. 0.97

00:14:25.100 The Romanis helped. The UAE helped. Everybody cooperated in this. But now with an actual

00:14:32.280 physical blockade, the Iranians are facing a problem. And they need to break out of this 1.00

00:14:37.660 blockade and improve their situation. And one way of doing so is to see, is to basically take

00:14:44.660 advantage of the fact that Donald Trump has been signaling for some time that he really doesn't

00:14:50.540 want to return to the war and capitalize on it and escalate. So the three major sides here

00:14:58.840 have an interest in escalation. The people who don't want the escalation are the Gulf states

00:15:04.600 because they will bear the brunt of Iranian missiles and attacks and the Americans who

00:15:11.100 somehow think that they can go and bomb Iran and then go back to peace, which is not how any of

00:15:17.580 these things work. When you go and attack someone, as Machiavelli said, you don't leave an injured

00:15:23.600 enemy, because the injured enemy is a lot more vindictive. And so they've injured the Iranians,

00:15:29.520 cornered them, didn't finish them off, because they can't finish them off, and now here we are. 0.88

00:15:36.100 the Iranians feel emboldened enough to want to escalate again. And so that's how the ceasefire 0.87

00:15:42.920 broke down. These are the incentives for the ceasefire to break down. The Israelis went ahead

00:15:49.520 and attacked Beirut in a violation of the ceasefire that they'd agreed, in violation of the

00:15:56.100 Iranian red lines. They attacked the Lebanese army. Hezbollah said that they don't recognize

00:16:01.240 that ceasefire because the way that it was meant to work as approved by the Lebanese government

00:16:05.700 was that it would be Hezbollah seizing fire, but not the Israelis.

00:16:11.520 So, like, ceasefire means different things to different people.

00:16:16.180 But the way this was meant to work was essentially to say

00:16:19.380 that the Israelis can act against any threat.

00:16:23.240 What's a threat? 0.99

00:16:25.320 As far as the Israelis are concerned, everybody's a threat. 1.00

00:16:28.340 Anybody is a threat. 1.00

00:16:30.080 So, anyway, ceasefire wasn't going to work.

00:16:34.820 Different sides escalated, and Iran fired four salvos of missile into Israel.

00:16:40.680 The Israelis responded with airstrikes over air defense systems, but also over petrochemicals

00:16:47.960 facilities in Iran, which is a big deal, because when you attack industry, you encourage retaliation 0.55

00:16:55.140 from the Iranians against the energy infrastructure in the Gulf.

00:17:00.060 And so the Israelis attacked the Iranian energy sector, not because it was necessary militarily,

00:17:08.440 but because what they wanted was for Iran to attack the Gulf, and for that to force the Americans back into the war.

00:17:17.700 This is the calculation behind it. 0.56

00:17:21.500 It seems to not have worked yet, but if they keep trying, eventually it will.

00:17:28.600 That I'm sure of. 0.65

00:17:30.060 And in response, the Houthis in Yemen decided that they were going to join the fray. 0.57

00:17:37.820 Now, I've been waiting for the Houthi to do something for some time.

00:17:43.180 In the previous round, they were very much the dog that didn't bark.

00:17:47.640 Now they finally decided to enter into the conflict, and they issued a statement saying

00:17:55.040 that they're going to stop all Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, and that they are going to

00:18:02.240 meet any escalation with escalation. Now, this has a couple of purposes, and they also fired

00:18:07.880 missiles into Israel proper. Now, this has a couple of purposes. Firing the missiles into 0.56

00:18:12.900 Israel, this is intended to support Hezbollah, and this is intended to force the Israelis to 0.95

00:18:18.680 distribute their air defense and their capabilities to make it easier for the Iranians. 0.88

00:18:29.060 The second objective, if the Americans escalate and try to stop the Houthi from blocking the Red 0.88

00:18:35.720 Sea, is to put pressure on the U.S. Navy so that it wouldn't be in a position to enforce the blockade

00:18:44.040 against Iran as rigorously. And if they can't enforce the blockade against Iran as rigorously,

00:18:50.820 that means that the Iranians solve at least part of their problem with falling oil exports.

00:18:57.820 So the thinking behind this is sort of two-phased, you know. One, support Hezbollah. Two, support

00:19:04.540 Iran. And then there is a third objective, which is this. The Iranians' bid to make shippers pay 0.75

00:19:16.040 in order to pass through the Strait of Hormuz seems to be working. And we are hearing from 1.00

00:19:22.880 some shippers saying, yeah, we're willing to pay Iran. I'll bet that pretty much all of the Asian 1.00

00:19:28.620 clients are willing to pay a million two million dollars per per ship in order to keep on trading 1.00

00:19:36.140 and keep on doing business and so for the houthi this is a good time for them to get into that

00:19:42.380 business they too have aspirations to charge fees for anybody using babel mandab the straight at the

00:19:53.500 tip of the Red Sea. This is obviously a disaster for the Egyptians. 0.99

00:19:59.500 It means that there might be less shipping, or it means that the Egyptians have to cut

00:20:05.580 the amount of fees that they charge for the use of the Suez Canal. 1.00

00:20:10.540 But for the Houthi, this is absolutely fine. So we saw the Houthi entering this, 0.97

00:20:16.460 which is bad news for the United States

00:20:19.480 because if you remember in 2024-2025 0.96

00:20:23.760 the Americans did their best to stop the Houthi

00:20:28.100 from closing Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea.

00:20:32.540 They absolutely failed.

00:20:34.620 After 45 days of bombing,

00:20:37.580 this part of Yemen here, this little corner of Yemen, 0.97

00:20:41.540 the Americans had to make a deal with the Houthi.

00:20:43.500 And as part of that deal, the Houthi were allowed, essentially, to continue to attack shipping related to Israel.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 10, 2026

PREVIEW LIVE： Realpolitik #50 ｜ The War Resumes

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