Natalie Kitroeff: Well, you're saying the US did have some knowledge that this was going to occur but didn't understand the magnitude of it. Just how far Israel was prepared to go.

Mark Misetti: And you saw the reaction from Iran. Iranian leaders were furious about this and also recognize the leverage that they have. If Washington really wants to end the war in Iran, the Iranians can also demand an end to the war in Lebanon and they can exploit this seam I just talked about in the USIsraeli relationship. So that's what they did. They basically said, "If you want to sit down and talk about an end of the war in Iran, well, Hezbollah and Lebanon are part of the ceasefire as well."

Natalie Kitroeff: which underscores just how much this puts the entire ceasefire at risk, which is obviously against Trump's interest." So why do that if you're Israel?

Mark Misetti: because Hezbollah and Lebanon are absolutely central to the idea that Prime Minister Netanyahu has set forward about the security of Israel. As much as he talks about Iran and the threat from Iran, the threat from Hezbollah, as he's laid out, is far closer obviously to home and central to his own political future. We'll be right back.

Natalie Kitroeff: Ronan, as you've told us, Israel was dead set against Lebanon being included in this ceasefire deal in the first place. So much so that they're willing to put the whole thing at risk over it. I want you to help deepen our understanding of why and particularly of what Mark just said that Hezbollah and Lebanon are absolutely central to Netanyahu's argument about Israel's security. So just walk me through that argument.

Ronan Bergman: So people forget that before October 7, it was who was considered to be the most fierce and threatening enemy of Israel. And Israel devoted so much preparing for such a war, they knew one day they were willing to fight.

Natalie Kitroeff: Kzbala that the extent they they didn't put enough attention to kamas.

Ronan Bergman: then started October 7 joined the war on a low level and it accelerated through a year and then in September 24 Israel to talk the world and they exploded some 3,500 pages. ers that were on the waist of operatives. And then for 10 days they continued to hammer. They killed the the commanders. They killed the troops. They exploded the bunkers andbala had to stand down and agree them to a ceasefire with humiliating terms. This was all a quite the extraordinary military intelligence operational success. But as it happened in this war, Prime Minister Net was not satisfied just with this victory. He had to end more. And he basically said to the Israeli public.

Natalie Kitroeff: Israel decimated. We removed the threat. Hm.

Ronan Bergman: You all the refugees that fled the north of Israel at the beginning of the war, you can go back. It's safe. Netanyahu is saying basically that as a result of this remarkable attack started with the pagers. I think we all remember that. And then proceeded with these waves of strikes taking out top Hezbollah leaders. The message was it's now safe for Israelis who lived in the north of the country which borders Lebanon to go home.

Natalie Kitroeff: Yes. And so the reality happening in Lebanon was that Israel was attacking every few days and did not react. And I think that gave first of all it gave the Israeli people the sense that Prime Minister was right. There's nobbala. They're not reacting. They're not retaliating.

Ronan Bergman: And the second, it gave the military officials a sense that they can do tobah whatever they want, will stay detailed.

Natalie Kitroeff: Wow.

Ronan Bergman: Well, turned out not to be that correct because once recovered and felt that this is now this is serious. This is about their own existence as an armed force in Lebanon, they started fighting.

Natalie Kitroeff: You're talking about the strikes that Hezbollah carried out on Lebanon at Iran's urging during this current war that exposed the fact that Hezbollah had not in fact been decimated.

Ronan Bergman: Yes. The whole of the northern hemisphere of Israel started to be bombed again with rockets and missiles. And you know even this house, the house I'm speaking to you from, this is Tel Aviv. This is central Israel. We were born by so they the non-existent decimated was still able to send missiles from Lebanon to central Israel just few days ago. So suddenly the Israeli public realized that.

Natalie Kitroeff: in Gaza the war is not over. Hamas is controlling half of the Gaza Strip. In Iran the war is not over. Iran is still sending missiles at Israel after Netanyahu said the problem is removed and now they realize that Lebanon is the front is not over because shooting so it's all like open fronts one after the other after almost three years of war it's still everything is open.

Ronan Bergman: okay I want to talk about that issue of open fronts is there an end point to this now ongoing war with Hezbollah I understand that Netanyahu is perhaps trying to save face at home with a public that realized that maybe they were misled and finish the job against this militant group. But when will Israel feel it has done enough on that front?

Mark Misetti: The main lesson that Israel learned and it's not just Netanyahu, you'll hear this from the lowest rank officer of the IDF or any other employee of the Israeli Defense Establishment. The lesson they learned from October 7 is never let a hostile force grow and get too strong once this force declares that its goal is to eliminate the state of Israel. So the endgame from Israel is to dismantleah, disarmah. This can be done in only three ways. It's either.

Ronan Bergman: does it out of its own will. Unlikely.

Mark Misetti: Yeah. Not very not very. Second is that the Lebanese government will go in full force, take the weapon and enforce its sovereignity over Kizbala. Now, this is something that the Lebanese government committed to do in the agreement of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon from September October 2024. They failed. So, the only alternative is that Israel will conquer Lebanon and dismantle, something that Israel doesn't want to do. They tried that in 1982 when it, you know, it added up very badly.

Ronan Bergman: And in the meantime, just to give some sense of security to the communities in the north, they create a buffer zone, a strip inside Lebanon where they'll have forces that will divide between citizens and the operatives of Kisbala at the other side.

Natalie Kitroeff: So this is about punishing Israeli enemies, showing strength for local consumption. This buffer zone requires Israel occupying part of Lebanon's territory, right, Lebanese land. The implication, of course, is that Israel plans or or some Israeli officials would like to see real massive destruction in parts of Lebanon continue.

Ronan Bergman: and it's happening as we speak.

Natalie Kitroeff: Okay, so it seems very clear why Israel is so invested in this. I want to talk now about Iran and why Iran is digging in over this and threatening to hold up the strait over these Israeli attacks. Ronan, is it just because Hezbollah has been such an important proxy for them in the region for so long?

Ronan Bergman: I think even much deeper. Shortly after the Khomeini clerical revolution in 1979, Iran started to invest in proxies in forces and organizations outside of Iran. And the first one and the closest ally was they founded in 1983 84 and then invested so much for basically three reasons. One is that they come from the same blood. They go to the same religious schools in the holy city of K and Najv. They are relatives. They are Shiites. And it's not just about Iran and the word that we are looking for is mukawa. Mukawa in Arabic means resistance. Iran and its proxies and the Houthis and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the militias in Iraq and in Syria they call themselves Jabal Mukawa the axis of resistance. And this case is a test of how much Iran is willing to risk in order to save the other partner of this axis. This is the core of their partnership, the core of their brotherhood. And so Israel wants to break the alignment. Israel want to destroy the axis. Hm.

Mark Misetti: And I think that the next few days or weeks are going to be quite significant in the history of the war, the regional war between Israel and the axis of resistance.

Natalie Kitroeff: All right, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this all sounds like a very difficult situation to resolve. Mark, I want to turn back to you and ask, given this history, what would a path to a resolution even look like here?

Mark Misetti: Well, there's no easy path and you could see at the end of last week everyone sort of groping around trying to figure out how to sort of handle all of these thorny issues at once. There was an announcement that Prime Minister Netanya and the Israeli government would begin discussions with the Lebanese government about the future of the conflict. But of course, the Lebanese government is not speaking for Hezbollah and no one's dealing and negotiating directly with Hezbollah. So that appeared to be a little bit of a fig leaf to sort of appear something was happening where no one really expects much out of that. And given that all of these issues are so closely stitched together, it does seem like this is all very intractable at the moment.

Natalie Kitroeff: When we've talked in the past, guys, you've both said that while a lot of people view Netanyahu as having a certain amount of sway over Trump, you've made it clear that Netanyahu does fear Trump. He does acquies to his demands. So, can't Trump force Israel to stop carrying out strikes that are threatening this truce? I guess my question is who is actually in charge here?

Ronan Bergman: No doubt. Prime Minister Netanyahu acknowledged that in a speech I think 3 weeks after the beginning of the war. While at the beginning he said we are partners, mutual partners. Then he said under the leadership of President Trump, he said something that was clear to any soldier, any officer, any general in the IDF that this war will end only when Trump says it's over. So it's clear that if President Trump decides that something would happen and be very strict with that, the president of Israel would not go to overt confrontation with him. No, that's one of the things that he very strict with. He won't.

Mark Misetti: Yeah, we've talked a lot about how instrumental Prime Minister Netanyahu was in convincing President Trump to go to the war against Iran, but ultimately, as Ronin said, in this relationship, Trump holds the leverage in ending it and he can tell Netanyahu when the war will end. So, should we assume based on that that Trump has not actually pulled that ultimate lever yet?

Ronan Bergman: Well, I think it's not clear to Trump yet that Hezbollah and Lebanon are the number one sticking point preventing a deal with Iran. But the more Hezbollah and Lebanon become central to whether this war ends or not, the more I think the United States and Trump will lean on Netanyahu to end the campaign.

Mark Misetti: I want to just end by taking us back to the beginning of this war when Trump decided to do something that no American president had ever agreed to before, which was teaming up with Israel to go to war with Iran. We're now in a situation where it's unclear whether the two countries that got into this war together are actually on the same page about getting out of it. And I just want to ask like is this just the inevitable result of getting into a joint war with a partner that doesn't share your long-term goals?

Ronan Bergman: I think that's partly right. There are many things the Trump administration and Benjamin Netanyahu are aligned on in terms of what they see as important to the security of the Middle East. However, once a war begins, things go out of your control. And as we've seen, Iran has not responded the way that the United States and Israel had hoped it would. Iran has shown no sign that it is eager to back down. And I think there's also a sense for Netanyahu that he's not going to get another chance to do this. A war against Iran has been Netanyahu's obsession for decades. And now he's got the United States president leading the war. And once that ends, it's probably not happening again. And so he sees this as his last best chance to achieve these goals in the Middle East. And he's going to be determined that nothing ends before he gets most of what he wanted. Which is why Netanyahu and his team and ministers when hearing the announcement from Islamabad that negotiation fell apart. They said, "Huh, you see this is President Trump that we like that is not giving up that is going full force and they are hoping we'll go back to Warso."

Natalie Kitroeff: And so this thing keeps going on. Well, Mark Ronan, thank you so much.

Mark Misetti: Thanks, Ally.

Ronan Bergman: Thanks, Nathan.

Natalie Kitroeff: On Sunday, the US military said that it would blockade any ships entering and departing Iranian ports beginning Monday, but would allow other ships to pass through the Straight of Hormuz. The move was a step back from Trump's earlier promise to block all traffic through the straight. In response, the speaker of Iran's parliament directly addressed American consumers, saying, quote, "Soon you'll be nostalgic for four to$5 gas. We'll be right back.

Natalie Kitroeff: Here's what else you need to know today. Eric Swallwell, a Democratic congressman from the Bay Area, said on Sunday that he was suspending his campaign for California governor in the wake of allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. The accusations were published Friday in articles by the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN and they prompted a wave of rescended endorsements and a criminal investigation. Swallwell repeatedly denied the accusations and said in an ex post on Saturday that he was sorry for quote mistakes in judgment and promised to fight what he called false allegations.

Natalie Kitroeff: And Victor Orban, the right-wing populist who's been prime minister of Hungary for 16 years, conceded that he lost the country's general election on Sunday. Orban was such a staunch ally of President Trump's that Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest last week to rally with him. But Vance's appearance didn't help Orban avert a landslide defeat to the center-right opposition, which is led by a former Orban loyalist, Peter Majiar. Majiar campaigned on an anti-corruption message and promised to improve relations with the European Union, which had been strained over Orban's pro-Russia stance.