Original subtitles

It is a very dark story we have to tell today. We left the last episode with the

Sabra and Shatila massacres, the horrors of one of the worst massacres in recent

Middle Eastern history. And today for this final episode in our series on the

Arab -Israeli wars, we have the crucial story of the birth of Hezbollah, a story

which of course leads us directly to the present and the current horrors that...

Poor Lebanon is again suffering.

And this is another dark moment in your history. And I'm sorry that as you sit

with us here that your friends and neighbors are suffering attacks and

and the villages of South Lebanon are being dynamited on our social media as

speak. Indeed, it is very painful to watch from a distance.

I wish I didn't have to leave, which I know, as I said in the previous episode,

sounds strange to people who might think, well, why wouldn't you want to

country at war? It is my country.

I grew up in the Civil War there, very much at the heart of it.

War, very unfortunately, is familiar to me.

We know how it works, we know the rhythm, and we take strength from being

together. And it is actually much...

more anxiety inducing to be far away because you don't have your finger on

pulse. You don't know exactly what is going on. So I stay in touch very, very

closely with friends and colleagues back home.

But for me, what has been most difficult almost to deal with is, as you may

know, I have another book coming out in the fall.

which, interestingly enough, is called The Best Kind of American, a title I

chose because it was a quote of someone about the main character in my book,

Malcolm Kerr, the American president of AUB who was assassinated in 1984 in

Beirut. But it is also incredibly interesting to have that as a title of a

in this.

when we're all wondering what is America about. And that book and the research I

did for it brought me through the four or five decades that we've been

in our conversation from 1982 up until today and this latest paroxysm of

violence that we're watching.

unfold in the region rippling across not just in Lebanon but Iran and the UAE

and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and Israel with America very much at the center of

it. And the argument I make in the book is that it really all started with the

1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon when it collided with the Islamic revolution of

Iran and at the time the desire and the ambition.

of the leader of that revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to export

revolution outside of Iran.

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kim i think what's incredibly important about your last book Black Wave, which

is a book that we absolutely love here on EmpirePod, and we have promoted as

really one of the most essential books to understand this region.

You make the crucial point that Iran's interest

and fixation with Lebanon predates the

1982.

It goes actually back to 1979, to the Iranian revolution.

This is against the conventional narrative, really, that Hezbollah grew

the invasion.

Yeah, the conventional narrative, and that is not necessarily wrong, but it's

not the entire story.

So the idea that Hezbollah grew in reaction to the 1982 Israeli invasion as

resistance movement is not the entire story.

The revolutionaries who wanted to bring down the Shah were training in Lebanon

before 1982, before 1979, even the fall of the Shah and the birth of the

Islamic Republic. They were training in Lebanon with Palestinian militants in

Palestinian camps.

in Lebanon, military training camps, with Yasser Arafat's people from 1975

onwards when Lebanon was in the middle of a war, pitting the Palestinians and

their allies in Lebanon to the right -wing Christians.

And Lebanon became a kind of free -for -all for training of all kinds of

groups. Across the world? From across the world.

including the Badr -Meinhof Brigades, the Red Army, they all came to Lebanon.

This was the era of, you know, the international left, right? It was not

Islamist movement yet. And there's a great book, actually, I'd like to

that book by Jason Burke.

Revolutionists. The revolutionists. So that is the sort of how these leftist

movements, you know.

changed the world at the time and how eventually some of it became Islamist

groups like Hezbollah. And so a lot of the revolutionaries who were training in

Lebanon, leftists but also Islamists, and then succeeded in bringing down the

Shah, had their eyes on Lebanon and wanted to export the revolution back to

Lebanon to fight Israel. And even as early as late 1979, you had some

engaged... Shia zealots from Iran who knew Lebanon, traveling back to Lebanon

try to go down to the border and fight Israel. And the Lebanese government at

the time still had enough authority to say, you know, you're crazy, we don't

want you here, go back home.

Everything changes in 1982.

Several things happen at the same time.

Of course, Israel invades Lebanon.

Hafez al -Assad, who is not a president of Syria, who is not a fan, Islamist

movements at all. He's killing his own Muslim Brotherhood Islamists in Hama in

1982, early 1982.

His army is being kind of decimated by the Israelis as they invade Lebanon.

Because remember, in the previous episode, we talked about how Syrian army

their surface to air missiles positioned in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley.

And within the first few days of the Israeli invasion, there's a battle

including Syrian jet fighters. And Hafez al -Assad loses so much of his air

force then, and is very angry with the Soviets for having supplied him with

such, you know, terrible... Substandard, old -fashioned equipment. Exactly,

yeah. And so he's trying to think how he can recover from that.

He dallies a little bit with the idea of maybe very quickly, but he does, maybe

he should...

ally himself with the Americans and leave the Soviet camp. But that idea

last very long, because as we've seen also in the previous episode, he decides

to start countering the American project by, for example, ordering the killing

of Bashir Meyl. The third thing that happens, which is crucial to our history

and to this episode, is that Iran, which is now engaged in a war with Iraq

since the end of 1980.

Only a year after the revolution, Saddam stages a massive invasion of

Iran. Absolutely. He thought that he would face a weak Iranian army and he

in for a major surprise. At first, he, you know, racks up some wins, but so

tactical successes, strategic defeat. Again, not the first person to discover

that while fighting the Iranians, because also by then.

Arab countries have realized that Khomeini is a threat to them. They were

to see the Shah go, who was their friend, including in Saudi Arabia.

And then they thought, okay, well, there's a new Iranian leader who kind of

speaks our language of religion, etc. We can do business with him. But they

quickly realized that he is actually going to be their enemy.

And competition also.

And competition, absolutely, across the Muslim world.

Because Khomeini brandishes the Palestinian cause.

as his ticket to legitimacy across the Arab and Muslim world. And he promises

deliver for the Palestinians where Arab countries have only delivered defeat.

He doesn't do that either.

I remember around this time going to Tehran and on the outer wall.

of the British embassy in Tehran.

The revolutionaries put up these rather brilliant cartoons, and there were all

sorts of different cartoons, but on the street that they renamed Bobby Sand

Street, it used to be Winston Churchill Avenue, and they changed it to Bobby

Sand Street after the IRA hunger striker. And on this was all these

causes, particularly the Palestinian cause, all over the British embassy back

wall. Absolutely.

It was a cause of the left. And so the reason why I mentioned the Iran -Iraq

and it's important is because by May 1982, the Iranians have regained most of

the territory they've lost to Iraq.

And they think the Iran -Iraq war is over and they're victorious and they can

move on.

And then they see the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and they think, if we can

on Iraq, we can take on Israel.

So they moved their forces in some numbers into the Bekaa Valley. Tell us

that. Give us the geography a bit, because you've got Mount Lebanon, which

where the cedars are, which is where the skiing used to be, which is a very

Christian area. But then down below, backing onto Syria, you've got the Bekaa

Valley, where Baalbek, the great temple is, where the great festival used to be.

Great agricultural land also, of course.

and orchards and agriculture and very mixed also Baalbek used to be very mixed

Sunni Shia Christian town Zahle also big city in the Bekaa Valley dominantly

Christian lots of Shia villages Christian villages Sunni villages But

Iranians decide to send an exploratory mission first to Damascus to discuss

idea of sending men to fight Israel to Lebanon.

And they discuss it with Hafez al -Assad, president of Syria, who, as I

has just lost faith and lost militarily to the Israelis and sees the Israeli

occupation.

of Lebanon and he can't do very much about it. He's lost two wars with Israel

already. He can't fight another one. He's not a fan of these Islamist

but he ponders the possibility that they could be useful to him in fighting the

Israelis in Lebanon by proxy instead of him having to do it. But they don't

want... traditional war. The Iranians come thinking that Hafez al -Assad will

give them tanks and fighter jets, etc., to fight the Israelis, and they

are met with a flat no.

So they send most of the contingent back to Iran, but they leave a small number

of people.

who set up in the Bekaa Valley.

There's a barracks, isn't there, behind the Temple Tabal? So the barracks, that

comes a bit later. It comes a year later when they are really already

established. But they start just in the homes of local clerics who were their

friends from when they were training back in the mid -70s.

And they set up a training camp in a small village called Janta.

And they start recruiting people to this new idea of a party of God, a party

that fights the enemy with the values of, you know, the Quran, etc.

They never fight the Israelis themselves.

And this is Hezbollah. And that becomes, yes, the party of God.

Hezbollah. The name is chosen quite early on, even though Hezbollah does not

announce its official coming into existence until much later.

But Hezbollah is born then, very much a creation of Iran, and

very much a project backed by, at the time, the Iranian ambassador in

Muhtashami Pour, Ali Muhtashami Pour.

a Dower cleric as well, who knew Lebanon very well, also from having trained in

the camps and having visited.

And we should say that Damascus has this Shia shrine to Zainab, which is full of

Iranian pilgrims and is a kind of major center of Shia activity in the region.

It becomes so after 1979. But before 1979, it was a shrine.

that was also visited by non -Shias, by Sunnis. And it is really Iran's project

to turn all these shrines that were often visited by Sunnis and Shias into

a Shia -dominated symbolism of the Islamic Republic.

And what is very important to mention here, and I wish actually we'd also

mentioned it in the previous episode, but we'll do it here, is that Ali

Khamenei, who was Supreme Leader, killed in the first opening shots of this

recent war, was president of Iran at the time.

And it is his pet project to start these proxy militias, these SIA proxy

militias outside of Iran.

These are his babies, right.

It is very much Khamenei's pet project to start all these proxy militias,

because actually...

The supreme leader at the time, Ruhollah Khomeini, isn't very keen on the idea.

And he is the one who says, bring all the men back because we have to fight.

still have to fight Iraq.

The war is not over.

And so they leave the small contingent. But you know who else is on the scene,

Willie, which we did not mention, and who gets called in to the State

after the Sabra and Shatila massacre?

It's the...

Deputy Ambassador of Israel to Washington, Benjamin Netanyahu. Yes, he

appears in Washington at this point.

He first appears as Deputy Ambassador in Washington in 1982, where he has just

arrived as Deputy Ambassador, Deputy to Moshe Arendt's ambassador, who wants

somebody who is not really a diplomat. He wasn't a diplomat at all.

But he was a very good man at PR.

So all the roots of everything we're seeing are gathering at this point. And

what you're also seeing, and this is something you point out very prominently

your book, is that the black wave begins. The black wave is the title. You

to see the Iranian Chadha.

This black outfit spreading through the Bekaa Valley and even into southern

Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut. Absolutely, because these Iranian young

Basij, the religious police, the Iranian Revolutionary

Guards who have come from Iran to initially fight the quote -unquote

enemy, then to set up Hezbollah, don't actually do any of the fighting

themselves.

They are only there to train the young Lebanese. It's like a force multiplier,

right? They recruit all these young men who will become the fighting force, the

young Shia who are driven by religion, by ideology, by testosterone, who, you

know, feel as Shias.

in Lebanon, traditionally oppressed, impoverished, discriminated against.

Yes, we need to make that point. But we haven't said that. The Shia are the

bottom of the social pyramid.

And that South Lebanon, which has been the area that the PLO was first based

which they've been driven out, and there's a kind of vacuum of power there

Yes, there's a vacuum of power. But the other story that is...

often misunderstood or mistold, and which I try to rectify in my next book,

that the PLO leaves a vacuum, and young Shias start looking

for an alternative.

And it's not quite like that either, because somebody like Aymad Mohniyi, who

would later become famous or infamous as the architect and Machiavellian mind

behind a lot of what Hezbollah will do, including bombings and kidnappings.

Ayman Mughni is a young Shia who is an eager recruit to the newly

founded camp, training camp by the Revolutionary Guards.

Ayman Mughni is not suddenly at a loss about what to do because the PLO has

and, you know, where should he go?

was close to the Palestinians, but not really a member of their guerrilla

movement, the Fatah, although it's often thought that he was, but he actually

wasn't. But he had trained with the Palestinians, that's where he got his

training from. But he had already been to Iran before 1982.

He wasn't just picked up on the street, as some stories or movies depict. He

wasn't just picked up on the street by Iranians who arrived in Lebanon.

He had already been in touch with the Iranians. He'd traveled to Tehran with

Lebanese clerics. In fact, on the day of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in

June 1982, Haimad Moukhaniyeh was in Tehran with several Iranian clerics.

who, by pure serendipity, had been on a pre -planned trip to Iran to ask for

Iran's help in setting up something to fight Israel.

And Ahmad Mounier flies back to Lebanon to begin the battle against the Israelis

as they advance towards...

Beirut, but he had already been in that milieu of being close to the Iranian

revolution. He was enamored with the Islamic revolution and was already in

context. Now, Kim, the first time that the world begins to wake up to realize

what it is about to face is in April 1983

at the American embassy in Beirut. Tell us what happens.

1983 is the year where everything goes wrong for America and for Israel in

Lebanon. Actually, it went wrong just a little bit before for Israel, not just

with the Sabra and Shatila massacre and the assassination of Basir Jumail, but

the first suicide bombing attack in Lebanon is targeting the Israeli

military headquarters in the southern city of Tyre.

And that is the first suicide operation organized by Ahmad Mughniyeh.

He is responsible.

He is responsible for organizing that. The Israelis pretend or deny, pretend

they don't know or deny that it was a suicide bomber, because it's suicide

bombing, because it's just catastrophic to admit that not only are they involved

in massacres, but now they've birthed some new form of terrorism with this

invasion that was supposed to change.

And this, again, is the lessons again and again of the Lebanon quagmire that

every attempt to stamp out for the final time resistance doesn't do that.

It produces new monsters.

I think it's the lesson worldwide of, you know, trying to stamp out local

resistance against occupation, whether it's in Vietnam or in Afghanistan or in

Iraq or in Lebanon.

It doesn't work. It doesn't work without a political vision that is constructive

and without diplomacy. And we can get to that as well.

But just one very quick point about these Iranian Revolutionary Guards who

end up fighting anyone. They just... train and they're very busy

which is how this black wave starts.

Radio stations with, you know, lessons of the Quran and pushing women to put on

the veil, marching down the streets of Baalbek with pictures of Khomeini and

green flags of the revolution, etc. It starts to change the city and it starts

to change the community, the Shia community.

And then it spreads to, as you said, the southern suburbs and southern Lebanon.

And Ahmad, it comes up with this idea of attacking the American embassy. This is

the crucial moment.

I'm not sure he comes up with it, but he is definitely part of the operational

plan. The man who is at the center of a lot of this is a man called Hussein

Moussaoui, who is the founder of something called Islamic Amal, which is

offshoot of Amal, the Shia militant party or militia and now political party

by... the man who is now the Speaker of the House, but was at the time a warlord

as well.

And Hussein Mousavi sits at the nexus of the relationship between Iran and

Damascus, between Tehran and Damascus, and he facilitates a lot of that. And

there are records of his conversations, intercepted conversations with Iranian

officials about wanting to do something spectacular in Beirut. And the Iranian

ambassador in Damascus, the go ahead.

And because Ayman Mughni is just 22 at the time, he cannot plan something like

that. This is a huge amount of explosives and something really that

more involvement than just a few kids.

So take us now to April the 18th, 1983, noon.

The Middle East changes dramatically with a single attack.

Indeed, it is.

The first time that America becomes the target of a

bombing in the Middle East. And it is a result of everything we've discussed in

this episode so far, in the past, the previous episode, of the Israeli

of Lebanon colliding with the Islamic revolution of Iran and meeting on the

shores of the Mediterranean.

in a project that Iran and Syria spearhead to put America out of

the Middle East.

And after Ahmad Mughani organizes the bombing of the Israeli army headquarters

in Tyre, they go for the next big thing with an action -coordinated, I'm sure,

with the capital Tehran, the Iranian ambassador in Damascus, and most

with the knowledge of Hafez al -Assad in Damascus and his people. So a pickup

truck loaded with some 2 ,000 pounds of explosives.

Which is a lot of explosives.

A lot of explosives, which one young man like Ahmad Mughni cannot necessarily

gather on his own, which is why this is a much bigger plot.

The drive through the front into the front door of the embassy because the

embassy had not yet installed the barriers. They had some thought that

suicide trucks could become a problem because they'd seen what happened in

But they were, you know, not ahead of, they were behind their planning.

drives through the central section of this eight -story building, a three

compound, which collapses entirely.

Sixty -three people are killed, including 17 Americans, and the whole

station is killed as well.

Eight CIA officers, including Robert Ames, famously depicted in Kai

Bird's book, The Good Spy, who was the head of Middle East at the CIA.

It's the deadliest attack on an American diplomatic mission up to that point.

But it's not the last because another one comes soon after. It's not the last.

But crucially, it's the sort of the opening salvo in this war by Iran and

to drive America out of the Middle East. And yes, absolutely.

It's not the first and it's not the last.

By October, we have the tragedy of the Marine barracks, which get bombed as

on the morning at 6 a .m. on a Sunday.

on October 23rd. And this is even bigger death toll, isn't it? This is an

absolutely vast... Even bigger, dramatic death toll. Two trucks, one into the

Marine barracks and one into the French barracks. Remember, we didn't go over

that in the last episode after we finished on Sabra and Shatila.

But, Willie, after the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Reagan decides to send the

Marine back to Lebanon.

And it is out of guilt because they have failed in their mission.

They're meant to have been protecting the Palestinians.

They've given that guarantee that they will be safe.

But Weinberger brought them out.

And so now they go back in. They go back in and with an undefined mission, other

than to sort of help the Lebanese government and the Lebanese army, you

prop themselves up. And on October 23rd, they are targeted in this Marine

barracks bombing.

Deadliest day for the U .S. Marines since the Battle of Iwo Jima in the

World War. A total of 241 American soldiers are

killed and 58 French paratroopers. And it's a

moment that is also defining for the history of the Middle East and America's

role in the Middle East. Kim, I want to talk now about something which was very

much something I was afraid of as a young journalist in the Middle East at

time, which was the kidnappings, which also begin around this time. Tell us

about this.

So one episode that is a little bit forgotten in these layers of tragedy

happened in Lebanon at the time is a separate... string of attacks, bombing

attacks in Kuwait in December of 1983.

So after the embassy bombing in Beirut, after the Marine Barracks bombing, the U

.S. Embassy and various other targets are targeted with bombs in Kuwait. There

are several casualties, but the attacks mostly fail, and the people who carry

out the attacks are caught by the Kuwaiti authorities.

This is not lawless Lebanon in the middle of a war where the Lebanese

government is incapable of finding anyone who's done anything.

They are caught.

One of them is the brother -in -law of Ahmad Mughni. And he is sentenced to

for life.

Ahmad Mughni, stay with me because family ties are complicated.

Ahmad Mughni is brother -in -law and also his cousin.

And Ahmad Mughni's wife, whose brother is now in a jail in Kuwait, Mustafa

Badreddin is his name.

Ahmad Mughniyeh's wife wants her brother back.

And so Ahmad Mughniyeh comes up with a genius idea of starting to kidnap

hostages in Lebanon to demand the freedom of Mustafa Badruddin in Kuwait.

this point, despite everything...

People like your mother, who was Dutch, are living in Lebanon.

This was a place where many Westerners had settled. There were people that

Lebanon. And this was a popular spot. The British at this point would send all

their foreign office people that wanted to learn Arabic to Beirut. It's famous

still, despite everything, for its nightlife, for its music, for its food.

There is a famous...

story, anecdote that Thomas Friedman tells, or it's famous because he tells

in his book, Thomas Friedman's also excellent book, From Beirut to

where he talks about how normal life continues in Lebanon, even throughout

war. And there are these dinner parties and clubs, and depending on where the

fighting is, the party moves a little bit. It's just part of social life.

It's just part of how people cope as well.

There are some incredible descriptions also of people from opposing factions

coming together for dinner, which is a lost art in today's world that is so

partisan.

Polarized, yeah.

Yeah, polarized. You should still be able to sit down over a meal and discuss

things.

But Tom Friedman tells this incredible story of being invited to a dinner party

for Christmas or something, and the shelling around them is insane, and the

hostess is waiting for things to calm down. And she finally says, well, would

you like to have your dinner before or after the ceasefire?

I mean, let's just proceed with things.

So there are still many foreigners living in Lebanon at this time.

including my mother, who does not, you know, we all somehow miraculously come

out of this war completely unscathed. My father had a business partner or

acquaintance, rather, who was kidnapped. He was an Italian, not very well -known

incident, but he was a man who'd lived in Lebanon for 30 years, who was in the

import -export insurance business and who gets kidnapped. And I will never

forget, William, I will never forget those phone calls of his wife.

to our house asking my father if he knew anything, if he'd heard anything.

And it was just so haunting. This woman, Madame Molinari, would call.

And I didn't know what it was about. I was a child. I was, you know, six or

seven. And I would say, Papa, Madame Molinari is on the phone.

And I didn't know what it was about. And I would ask him. And he's like, well,

you know,

she's looking for her husband. And he probably didn't want to tell me too much

more because it was just so distressing that somebody could disappear.

Our mutual friend Charlie Glass got taken at this time.

Absolutely, absolutely. And it stayed with me, Willie. I know it's slightly

going off on a tangent, but if you'll allow me.

This stayed with me, these haunting phone calls that stayed with me forever.

I always wondered, what happened to Mr. Molinari? Where is he? Did she find him?

What happened?

And in this terrible saga of hostages, some of them survived.

Some of them were released.

Terry Anderson.

Terry Waits. John McCarthy.

John McCarthy, British.

Lots of Americans also.

All tied to radiators and basements. Some terrible stories.

Terrible, terrible, vengeful, sick psycho.

stories of torture, of pain, of punishment by their

hostage takers. Some of them died in captivity.

They were sick.

Michel Seurat, a famous French, you know, political scientist who was also

hostage and died from hepatitis, apparently.

possibly leukemia, we're not sure, died in 1986. Terry Anderson, longest held

American hostage, finally released in 91.

But during my research for the book, my next book, as I was exploring this

hostage crisis, I finally looked up Mr. Molinari, and I found the news reports

about him.

After 91, when the hostage crisis comes to an end, people are still looking for

Mr. Molinari because he has not come out and they're looking for information.

And he had actually been killed almost immediately after he was taken hostage.

And so his wife had been looking for him all these years, but he was already

dead. And the cruelty of it will never leave me. You know, researching this

chapter,

nearly made me want to give up this book because it was just too painful to

imagine that somebody could be so cruel to do this to another human being and

also to live through the pain that these hostages had gone through. And I

understand that Ahmad Mughni was trying to get his brother -in -law out of jail

in Kuwait, but his brother had a trial in court.

for something that he had done, which was considered to be a terrorist action.

And the Kuwaitis were adamant that they would not release him and undo their own

justice system. But crucially, and I know that this is where you want to go

next, William, this crazy idea of Ahmad Mughniyeh, which begins with a previous

kidnapping episode, which I will not reveal here. And you'll have to read my

book because it is the genesis of it all. It is the genesis also of Ahmad

as Iran's man in Lebanon.

And so Ahmad Mughni is kidnapping with his people. And this can be done very

quickly and very easily in Beirut, where people walk on the streets freely.

Now, Kim, let's refocus on Hezbollah again. Hezbollah, who've been behind

hostage attacks, who've been behind, in some form, both the Marine and the

embassy bombings, although there'd be different groups named at the time, such

as Islamic Jihad. It's the same complex of Shia groups behind this.

The moment that people realize what Hezbollah has really become is in 2006.

happened then?

2006 is the next big war between Israel and

Hezbollah. Very briefly, in the 1980s, Hezbollah is mostly busy

proselytizing and fighting America, holding hostages and attacking American

targets. It is also busy.

killing what was then known as the Lebanese resistance against Israel,

mostly leftist and communist.

Hezbollah wants to dominate the scene of the fight against Israel and wants to

Islamize it. So actually they start by killing first their own as well,

including within the Shia community.

1990, the Lebanese war ends.

Syria is occupying Lebanon fully.

except for the part that Israel is still occupying. And Syria and Iran agree

that although all militias should disarm, Hezbollah can keep its weapons

national resistance movement against Israel. It is now the dominating force,

dominant force on that scene. The communists are out of the picture.

gone home or they've been killed. And the other part of the agreement is that

,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers or members can stay in the

Valley. And that is crucial to understand today how it is that we still

Iranian Revolutionary Guard co -members in Lebanon.

The 90s is fairly peaceful. By 2000, the Israelis decide they've had enough of

occupying southern Lebanon.

They pull back.

They pull back. It is a victory for Hezbollah. The Israelis had made the

decision anyway, but it is a victory for Hezbollah.

And they claim it very much as such.

Absolutely. And they claim it and they are revered and lauded, not just within

the Shia community, but in Lebanon generally, including by Christians and

the Arab world.

They have won where no other Arab army has managed to win. They have won

against Israel. They have liberated Arab land.

against, occupied by Israel, which no other Arab army, no other Arab faction,

other Arab country has managed to do. The Egypt had got Sinai back through a

peace agreement, but this is the first time that there is Arab land that has

been won through force of arms. But 2006, tell us what happens then.

So to clarify that after 2000, everybody thinks, okay, you know.

Hezbollah has done its job. It's going to go home, but it doesn't for various

reasons. They find ways to maintain their raison d 'etre. Keep their

yeah. Keep their weapons with support from Syria and Iran, and also because of

major policy failures on America and Israel's side, major policy failures

have to do with why Israel withdrew unilaterally and not as part of a peace

accord.

That was a failure of the Clinton administration in its waning days. So

forward to 2006, Hezbollah kidnaps a couple of Israeli soldiers on the border

and ignites a 34 -day war with Israel.

In the backdrop, there's also a war happening between Israel and Hamas in

So a lot of similarities, again, with what we've seen over the last couple of

years. It's a devastating war for Lebanon, but Israel...

which has told the Americans we need 30 days to finish the job, realizes it

cannot defeat Hezbollah. It had asked the Bush administration, Prime Minister

Ehud Olmert had asked the Bush administration, give us 30 days, don't

ceasefire, we can do it. And after 30 days, they told the Bush administration,

we can't do it, we need a ceasefire.

So again, Hezbollah...

victorious, venerated around the Arab world for giving the Israelis a bloody

nose and not losing the war even though they didn't win it. There is a

complicated element here which we need to insert, William, which is very

important for people to understand the very mixed feelings that people have in

Lebanon about Hezbollah.

Hezbollah also now stands accused of murdering, assassinating Lebanon's Prime

Minister in a plot organized

by Ahmad Mokhnieh and his brother -in -law, freed since the end of 1990, who's

now working with Ahmad Mokhnieh. Mustafa Badr -Erdin is back in Lebanon with

Iran's support and Syria's support and help.

They assassinate Lebanon's prime minister. And there's a series of

assassinations, including friends of mine, Gibran Twaini, editor of the

newspaper Al Nahar, Samir Asir, writer for Al Nahar, author and historian, who

are assassinated because they stand in the way of Iran's vision for the region.

By now, in Syria, you have Hafez al -Assad's son as president, Bashar al

A former ophthalmologist from West London.

Yeah, and there are even doubts about whether he ever finished his diploma,

actually. I've heard that he's practicing again in Moscow, but maybe

true. Gosh, I wouldn't want to go see him to check my eyes. But he is weak, he

needs legitimacy, and he is enamored with Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of

Hezbollah, who has been leading Hezbollah since the early 90s.

And they formed this sort of, you know, a very interesting trio, you know,

Hezbollah, Bashar al -Assad in Damascus, and the Iranians in Tehran, who, if we

can remind our listeners also, all of this is happening with the backdrop of

US -led invasion of Iraq, where the Americans are now occupying Iraq and

two insurgencies, one Sunni and one Shia. The Iranians are worried that

is going to come for them.

Damascus is worried that the Americans are going to come for them. And so they

start using the playbook they learned in the 80s in Lebanon, is to use violence

against the Americans, blow things up, kill people.

And so the project of ejecting America from the Middle East continues with

assassinations in Lebanon and, of course, with the insurgency in Iraq.

And guess what?

I mean, eventually the Americans leave Iraq, right?

And in Lebanon, Hezbollah rises as a political power with veto power

over Lebanon's politics.

And in Iraq, Iran becomes, you know, also the kingmaker.

So let's fast forward again, Kim, now to October the 7th. We're now in the

present. Hezbollah's role in all this because Iran is supporting Hamas.

But it's also supporting Hezbollah. And there is an axis which is running from

Tehran through Damascus, through Beirut and southern Lebanon into

Hamas land, into Gaza.

So I want to be careful here to make clear that as far as we know, there is

clear information that Iran knew the details or supported or helped with the

planning.

of October 7th. That's very important.

What's your source on that, Kim?

Western officials, high -ranking American officials. I think even the

have said it. What is the nature of that if they didn't know about October 7th?

Is it funding? Is it weapon systems or what's going on? It is funding and

weapons, but it is not operational knowledge.

Hezbollah. and Iran were not aware of the operational details.

And this is not to justify or excuse or make them sound like moderates. But from

my conversations with Western diplomats based in Beirut, who speak to Hezbollah,

Hassan Nasrallah was shocked by the savagery of the images of October 7.

from a man who, you know, is thought to have been behind the assassination of

Rafiq Hariri, Prime Minister of Lebanon.

And it's the moment which I think, you know, we will need a lot of years of

hindsight to understand exactly what happened.

Hamas was expecting that the axis of resistance would rally and inflict

Armageddon on Israel on that day. And it didn't happen. I know that missiles

rained on Israel, but it wasn't what Hamas...

And instead, there is an extraordinary Israeli operation with the Bleepers,

famously, which wipes out a great deal of the Hezbollah fighters and

commanders, as well as obviously a number of civilian casualties.

Absolutely. A year later, it is Lebanon that is at war, or Hezbollah that is at

war with Israel.

during all this time to do a very careful, calibrated tit -for -tat with

He wants to throw support for Hamas, but he doesn't want to drag Lebanon into

war because the lessons of 2006 were terrible for the Shia community.

Hezbollah was not defeated, but it was devastating.

goal is survival of the regime. It does not want to have a direct confrontation

with Israel.

It plays also a choreographed game of missiles and replies and tit for tat and

very choreographed messaging.

Because as I said, everybody is guilty of hypocrisy, the Israelis, the

the Americans.

And everybody is deploying weaponry and missiles and AI with full

impunity. And this is what, you know, it's so difficult for us in Lebanon

because we find ourselves in the middle of it, a battleground, just as in 1982.

I mean, we're not even caught between a rock and a hard place. We're caught

between three rocks that are pounding, you know, on us.

Kim, we have a couple of very important questions to ask. First of all,

following the pages and following the assassination of Nasrallah, you get the

impression that Hezbollah is, if not beaten, at least severely on the back

at the moment. Is that a correct impression?

That's what the Israelis thought at the end of the conflict in 2024, when they

carried out a ceasefire, that Hezbollah was decapitated, that they could no

longer inflict damage on Israel, and that 70 % of their capacity was

And then, you know, Israel did not do what it should have done, which is to

to begin diplomacy.

through the Americans or however which way they wanted, and reach out to a

Lebanese government that was the best government and president that we've had

decades since before the war, to try to turn this tactical military success into

a diplomatic strategic victory.

And this is a pattern that is repeating everywhere across the Middle East with

every conflict that Israel is engaging in, and similarly with Iran, similarly

with Gaza.

and the Palestinians and with Syria.

So fast forward to February this year when Israel and America launched their

first strikes against Iran and killed Ali Khamenei, whom we were discussing

previously, who was president of Iran in the 80s, now supreme leader with

Benjamin Netanyahu, deputy ambassador to Washington in 1982, today prime

minister of Israel.

You know, Hezbollah decided to avenge.

Ali Khamenei's killing and launched missiles against Israel, even though

had been bombing Lebanon throughout the prior year, despite the ceasefire. So

Israel was in breach of the ceasefire. And they were able to rebuild their

capacity during that year, even though they were being bombed by Israel and

Lebanon was being bombed by Israel.

probably because the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, were very actively

working to rebuild Hezbollah's capacity because they knew that another war was

coming. You know, Israel and Trump last summer also said that Iran's nuclear

capacity had been obliterated and this was the war to end all wars. But it was

very clear to me and many of us in the Middle East that this was not going to

the last war and that Iran felt that if it did not strike back hard, the next

time that this would be a recurrent pattern, that it had to show its

And again, I'm not justifying, I'm explaining.

It had to show its enemies that it could actually inflict real pain to others

and that it would not just send choreographed missiles anymore.

But Kim, nonetheless, there is a sensation that Nasrallah is

The Israelis are wiping out great swathes of southern Lebanon. A lot of

villages and towns are being destroyed in front of us every day.

Syria is no longer under the Assad's and they are no longer supporting

Hezbollah.

And Iran is obviously now under direct attack.

On the face of it, you could take the view that Israel has made some strategic

successes here.

and that they have degraded their enemies more than we would have thought

possible a few years ago. Do you agree with that, or do you think that there is

no reason to think that the story is over? The story is not over.

Brilliant, brilliant tactics.

You know, I could sit here if I were an American general or an Israeli general

and describe in detail the brilliance of the military strategy and the targeting

and the penetration of intelligence, including because the enemy

is not as smart on both sides, right? I mean, Hezbollah exposed itself

dramatically to the outside world via social media as it bragged about the

massacres it was carrying out in Syria.

in support of Bashar al -Assad. And so the Israelis were just hoovering up all

this information about who was going where and the videos and the posts and

funeral announcements, and it hoovered up all that information.

And the Pager operation, which killed and maimed so many in Lebanon, yes, you

could describe it as tactically brilliant. But Leon Panetta, former CIA

America, also described it as state -sponsored terrorism.

Because they blew up amongst the people, just regular civilians.

Yeah, in supermarkets, in houses, in restaurants.

In supermarkets and clinics and homes.

So my concern is that just as in 1982, you know, Israel claims victory because

they have gotten rid of the PLO, which has gone into exile, which was the goal

of all this. Syria looks like it's on its knees, but it gives birth to

else.

Hezbollah. We don't know what this is going to give birth to, but I suspect it

is not the end of the story. And my deep concern is that if Israel occupies

Lebanon, it will give renewed justification and raison d 'etre for

For new generations of resistance.

And at a time when Hezbollah is resented by, I would say, a majority of the

Lebanese population. So just as You can see in Iran, even those who hate the

regime rallying around their country.

Are you seeing a situation in Lebanon where despite everyone being very

irritated by Hezbollah bringing a new war in Lebanon, that again there will be

rallying of future generations to support against this coming occupation?

It depends how the war ends in Lebanon, whether there is occupation or not.

Beyond the wholesale destruction of Lebanese villages, it's not clear yet

Israel is going to physically occupy the south. They've said they will.

We'll have to see. I think they've learned some lessons from their

They can't control this uninhabited area from the sky. They don't need to be

physically present, actually. So that may be one of their military strategies.

I don't discount two things. One, that the regime in Iran could still fall

the pressure. And in Lebanon, if there are enough smart people in America, in

Israel, in Lebanon, in Damascus, in Europe.

There could still be a diplomatic outcome to this. Lebanon is much more

complicated than Iran when it comes to Hezbollah in the sense that the

tensions that are bubbling up, that is pitting the country against the Shia

community, you know, all of that is, you know, for another episode maybe. But I

don't see a wholesale rallying of the country against Hezbollah, no. I see

pockets. of the Shia community rallying again, despite their anger at what

Hezbollah has done to Lebanon. And finally, one last question, a brief

Kim. The fate of the Palestinians, this remains the great unsolved sore at the

heart of all Middle East.

Israel tries to resolve all problems militarily.

The Palestinian question remains at the center of everything, despite what the

Israelis may try to say that it's not important that they can solve, that they

can make peace with the whole of the Arab world and ignore the Palestinians,

which is often what they try to do. I know we've had the Oslo Accords, the

Madrid Conference, the Abraham Accords, which...

normalize Arab -Israeli relations, again, without resolving the Palestinian

question. I think there is no way around this Palestinian question. And if I may

end our episode with a quote by American scholar of the Middle East and

president of the American University of Beirut, who was assassinated, as I said,

in 1984, Malcolm Kerr. He wrote something in 1977, William, 1977,

with so much And he says the central Arab grievance has always been the

dispossession of the Palestinians, personal dispossession for half of them,

political dispossession for the other half, because of the connotation of

injustice and shame.

overwhelming in their eyes, the Arabs have never been able to drop the issue.

Because it casts into question the whole basis on which Israel came into being,

the Israelis have never been able to face it.

Efforts on one side or the other to bury or sidestep the question are always

suspect. It is the common curse of all concerned, including the Palestinians

themselves. This is the main reason.

why separate deals in the Arab -Israeli conflict are always likely to come

unstuck. Thank you very, very much. An extraordinary marathon.

That brings to an end our series on the Arab -Israeli wars, but sadly this is an

ongoing story which has no end in sight.

Yes, I'm afraid we'll revisit this in a few months or a few years.

Goodbye from me, William Durumple.

Thank you so much.