@jeremyscahill.com | Amal Saad (X: @amalsaad_lb)
"I think it would be great to hear your assessment of how you assess that Hezbollah is navigating this period right now. Because it is a extremely consequential moment for Hezbollah as a movement, as a fighting force, as a political entity. Yeah, I think it's very important to sort of preface that by saying like this, so this agreement had been in the works for months actually. And according to reports like from Al-Akhbar, the agreement was actually completely kind of fleshed out already right before March the 2nd, when Hezbollah first kind of entered the fray and resumed its resistance or responded to Israeli aggression that had been going on since November, 2024, when the ceasefire with Lebanon was meant to, you know, take place. And so that agreement had already been in the making. And so when Hezbollah, you know, stepped in, I think there was this very misguided belief or a huge miscalculation on the part of the US, Israel, and these Lebanese authorities that Hezbollah would be weakened considerably by a huge strike on Iran. And the idea was that they genuinely believed that Iran would fall, that the system, the political system in Iran would collapse once the leader, Supreme Leader Khamenei was assassinated and so on. And that didn't happen. And Hezbollah kind of, also not only was Iran extremely resilient, but even Hezbollah sort of came back with a vengeance, so to speak, and sort of proved that all these months, it had been sort of reconsolidating, reconfiguring, resupplying weapons, et cetera. And so there was, I think, this maybe perhaps surprise in that result, because this agreement is kind of incongruous with this whole geostrategic context of a very powerful Iran. I mean, Iran is very clearly now arising, I don't want to say a regional hegemon, but it is by far now, the strongest regional power, I would say. And Hezbollah has also proven that it is much more powerful and definitely not finished as many had predicted it had been since November, 2024. So this agreement does not reflect the political reality on the ground. And so-"
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@jeremyscahill.com | Amal Saad (X: @amalsaad_lb)