00:00Obviously, the Syrian, the Israeli, sorry, foreign minister says he's keen on normalizing ties with Syria and Lebanon.
00:08Does the United States support that, you think?
00:11Oh, yes, absolutely.
00:12This dates back really to President Trump's campaign, where he said on numerous occasions that his goal would be to expand the Abraham Accords as much as possible.
00:20And then you follow that with once the administration came in, his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, on a couple occasions said publicly that Syria and Lebanon were the ones they were looking to.
00:30As first countries to expand the Abraham Accords, who could make peace.
00:34And I know from my own trips to Washington, my own work there in particular, that there is a strong effort, a strong focus, ultimately, to get to peace between Syria, Lebanon and Israel in particular.
00:44And if you look at the historical framework of how the Trump administration has pursued these peace accords in the Middle East, you can look toward, for example, in Trump 1.0, after they assassinated IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani,
00:56the strategy was to put Iran in a box and then move to peace.
01:01And so following the strikes that just happened against the Iranian regime and its nuclear program,
01:06you have a similar strategy that the administration could be pursuing again, as the regime licks its wounds, pivot as an opportunity to make peace.
01:14And so, yes, the answer is the administration is very interested.
