00:00I mean, just turning our attention specifically to Lebanon, I mean, a normalization of ties between Israel and Lebanon, something that would have been completely unimaginable even a few months ago.
00:12I mean, wouldn't that render Hezbollah completely irrelevant?
00:16Isn't Hezbollah's whole raison d'être in a way resistance and protection, as they put it, against Israel?
00:24Absolutely. It would completely undermine their entire raison d'être, as you said.
00:31Hezbollah was created by Iran, something that people forget.
00:34It was created by Iran in the 1980s to, quote, resist Israel.
00:38And then over the decades, they took on this added narrative where they were so-called protecting the Lebanese citizens from Israel, except that they did nothing to protect them.
00:47On the contrary, all they did was devolve the country into war in 2006 and then again last year.
00:52And on top of it, now they're not even able to pay for the reconstruction of homes of their own people, of their members, of their supporters, of the Shia Lebanese whom they promised to protect.
01:05And so if you do have a peace deal and Hezbollah's stated reason is to pursue this resistance, then absolutely their cause becomes completely irrelevant.
01:14Now, what happens after that, whether they completely go fall into the dustpan of history or whether they turn into some kind of political party is hard to say.
01:24I would say it's hard to envision them as a political party because ultimately their ties are with Tehran and with the Iranian regime in particular, which is currently licking its wounds.
