0:10Israel, without warning, launched Operation Eternal Darkness on April 8th against Lebanon.
0:16In the span of 10 minutes, Israel hit more than 100 sites across the country, killing more than 300 people and wounding over 1,000. This act of state terror took place as a regional ceasefire agreed to by Iran and the United States took effect.
0:31Israel carried out a Gaza-like obliteration of villages in southern Lebanon, driving 1 million people, a fifth of the Lebanese population, from their homes.
0:42The current ceasefire declared on April 16th is likely to prove as elusive as all previous ceasefires. Israel has not ceased its bombing campaign in the south and its random bombing attacks in Beirut even during this ceasefire. Ceasefires mean nothing to Israel, which is planning to resume the attacks on Iran with or without the United States. In the 7 months following the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in November of 2024, Israel continued to occupy territory in southern Lebanon and pound Lebanon with airstrikes, killing at least 250 people. Israel's goal is to turn Lebanon, like Syria, into a failed
1:22state and set the weak Lebanese military against Hezbollah, precipitating a civil war. This objective is not new. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, it began a 22-year occupation in the south.
1:37Israel carried out a full invasion of the country in 1982, which would result in the deaths of tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians and birthed the resistance movement Hezbollah.
1:48Joining me to discuss the crisis in Lebanon and how it will affect regional stability is the journalist Laith Marouf from Free Palestine TV. He's based in Beirut and is covering the Israeli assault on Lebanon. Laith, you just came back from southern Lebanon.
2:07What did you see and what did you report on?
2:11>> Well, thank you very much Chris for having me on your show. Uh and I would like to send my congratulations to the Lebanese people, the Iranian people, people of the axis of resistance on the successes to force the United States and the Zionist colony into a ceasefire.
2:33Uh what we saw today, we we actually started our our travel down to the south around midnight last night when the {quote} {unquote} ceasefire came into effect.
2:44Uh we drove down. There was already thousands of people uh not waiting for the permission from anybody trying to get down to their villages uh in fact even though both the speaker of the house uh Nabih Berri, uh leader of the Amal movement, and uh officials of Hezbollah issuing statement telling people don't go down because the Zionists are a vengeful enemy and you cannot trust them. Wait till the morning. People still went down. So, as we were driving down, it was uh there was uh thousands of people lined up on the streets on almost every intersection uh up to Nabatieh's uh town, which is the largest city in the central sector
3:33uh of the border region uh between occupied Palestine and Lebanon.
3:37And uh then we uh started driving um around trying to check on those cities and towns and villages that were abandoned uh under the bombardment of the Zionists.
3:50There was massive uh, destruction.
3:53Um, but uh, to see all those people coming back joyfully, uh, dancing outside their homes, uh, you know, sitting down in the rubble smoking shisha. And, uh, uh, you know, this showed us how much the, uh, connection of the people to the land is in Lebanon. There was a few, uh, things that we saw that I don't think anyone has reported on yet.
4:20Uh, one of them is we got to the Beaufort, uh, castle. It's a Crusader castle, uh, just outside Nabatieh city near near Nabatieh city. It's called Arnoun castle in Arabic. Uh, and, uh, when we got there, uh, there was locals that were removing, uh, Israeli flags from top of Beaufort castle. And, uh, we, in the beginning, didn't understand how these Israeli flags made it into the Crusader castle. This is like north of the Litani river.
4:55And, uh, what we were told is that in the early hours of this morning, uh, the Zionists sent, uh, four, um, not quadcopters, but, uh, you know, um, those drones that have eight, uh, actual, uh, blades.
5:13Huge ones. Each one of them carrying hastily made, uh, rods with uh, tripod legs and Israeli flags and one that had actually a surveillance dome. Uh, and they landed with these drones on top of the Beaufort castle, which looks over the whole of the south of Lebanon and much of the area around Nabatieh city, uh, in order to, uh, you know, make people feel or lie to the rest to themselves that that made it north of the Litani River.
5:48And the we saw those flags the the locals threw them off the cliff.
5:54Remember just last week the Zionist fell into an ambush at the bottom of the valley under Beaufort Castle when they were trying to cross the Litani River. They were ambushed and they lost many of their soldiers, many injured and they abandoned all their equipment including very heavy machinery, three heavy machineries, all these canoes, all these temporary bridges that were trying to build over the Litani River. So it's clear that that ambush that they fell into you know it itched deeply in their heart that they wanted to come and make this fabricated win by planting these flags by the use of these
6:44drones.
6:46Another location that we visited that we thought was very telling about the battles that happened over the last 45 days was the town of the bean which is just one town north of Al-Khiam and Al-Khiam is very famous village on the border directly on the border with occupied Palestine and the Hula Valley.
7:14And during 45 days the Zionist were unable to capture Al-Khiam or enter it.
7:21So what happened is that they went through a Christian town that is mainly controlled by the Christian supremacist Phalange and Kataeb party that didn't have any Lebanese resistance Hezbollah members in there to protect it. Uh, the those Kataeb Christian supremacist parties let the Israelis go through Marjayoun to get to the Bean and um and try to kind of uh cut the supply route for the resistance into Khiam. Now, what has happened is that the Israelis were scared of sitting and sending an armored column, so they sent in a special force infantry special force into the Bean, but they were already spotted by the resistance and
8:12the resistance lured them into the village and as soon as the uh special forces entered into two homes to begin stationing themselves in the village, they were bombarded from all sides by the resistance and there was a little massacre of the uh invading forces and that required a huge uh um waves of bombardment from air by the Israelis to try to extract their uh trapped uh invading force. And in this crazy bombardment, um the Bean has a historical uh castle in it and also a graveyard for French soldiers that uh perished in Lebanon in 1941 uh during the uprising across of uh Syria and Lebanon against French
9:07occupation. Uh the Israelis dropped a bunker buster, the largest size uh of these bunker busters, onto the graveyard uh hosting these French uh dead soldiers, and wiped it off the map.
9:24There was a crater that is at least 40 m wide and uh 20 m deep. Uh and um the marker for these graves, the the uh you know, the there's an even a statue there for for the soldiers all destroyed.
9:43You know, it's it's almost 80 years since the death of these French soldiers and the Lebanese people, although they fought the French to leave, uh, still respected those graves, but it was the Israelis that, uh, destroyed them. So, in general, what we understood from looking at, uh, the few scenes scenes of battles that we visited was that the Israelis had, uh, you know, huge losses.
10:13This is also, of course, you know, proven with the videos that Hezbollah, uh, released over the last 40 somewhat days, at least around 200 tanks destroyed or out of commission above and beyond all their other heavy equipment that they, uh, lost, the armored vehicles and jeeps and what have you. So, uh, you know, we look at this and and we can wait to see more and more of the videos that are going to be released for sure right now by Hezbollah, uh, since they don't have the worry of, uh, trying to bring the videos through a a battle zone to the editing, uh, teams.
10:56Uh, so we will see more of that, uh, in the next few days.
10:59Uh, the last thing I will say about what we saw here there is that the Zionists, uh, were trying to still destroy, detonate houses in villages that they still occupy right now before they have to leave. And, uh, throughout the day we were hearing, uh, huge explosions of, uh, houses that have been being detonated in villages, uh, across the border that they the Israelis are still stationed in, but will be leaving soon.
11:29>> Well, they have our reports are I virtually demolished. There's an estimated 20 villages in the south that just entire communities.
11:41>> Yeah, I mean, there was already a lot of villages that were destroyed during the you know, the 66 day war in 2024 and the so-called ceasefire that followed about 15 months of ceasefire.
12:00And the villages that they have destroyed now are were all partially destroyed already. I think the the most important thing that the Zionists were trying to do over the last two few days of this war before Donald Trump forced them to end their movement in Lebanon was to try to capture Bint Jbeil town. Bint Jbeil is in you know, a second line or third line village in the central zone of the border with occupied Palestine. It's very famous for the speech of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah martyr Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah that he gave in the year 2000 after the liberation of Lebanon where he said in the the the soccer field in the the of the
12:55town where he said the Zionist colony is as weak as a spider's web. And so they were trying to you know, achieve some emotional or psychological victory. And again to attack Bint Jbeil they were unable to reach it except after the treasonous collaborationist Prime Minister Nowaf Salam ordered the military uh, the Lebanese military to withdraw from three Christian villages that are, uh, right uh, south of Bint Jbeil, uh, where then the Israeli military entered those three villages and surrounded Bint Jbeil. And the battle for Bint Jbeil was almost 35 days and the Israelis were unable to enter the
13:46the main parts of the city and lost tens of tanks and soldiers in this battle. And again, uh, they were unable to achieve that, uh, symbolic victory that they were trying to hurry up, uh, before uh, Trump forces them into ceasefire. Remember this, they they refused to accept a ceasefire, uh, a week ago when, uh, Iran and the United States reached that deal, just because they wanted to reach, uh, an occupied Bint Jbeil and they failed miserably.
14:22>> I want to talk about the tanks. So, we've seen images of Israeli soldiers leaping from their tanks and fleeing. We don't know a number, but it's certainly significant the tanks that were disabled or destroyed by Hezbollah. We also saw Israeli columns of tanks almost bumper-to-bumper. I know from covering war you never do that. You space your tanks out.
14:46Uh, I'm curious why Hezbollah was so effective in taking out tanks. I believe they were taken out by drones. Is that correct?
14:54>> Yes. Yes. So, Hezbollah was, uh, using drones, uh, FPVs that like the ones that have been used also in the Ukraine war, the ones that are very simple, uh, with an attached bomb at them and you just drop it. That's one way. They had also all these suicide drones that would crash into these tanks and have, uh, shells attached to them.
15:16They also were using their, uh, ATGMs and Hezbollah is considered the most uh, uh, you know expert military force in the world in the use of ATGM's. We watched how they were shooting >> those are for people who don't know, Dave.
15:35>> Yeah, anti-tank you know missiles like RPGs but much more advanced that you know, there's a camera on on the nose of this missile and it's guided by hand and and can evade any attempt to take it down.
15:53And we watched throughout the 33-day war and the solidarity front with Gaza in 2024 all those amazing videos of Hezbollah fighters hitting pinpoint little cameras on the basis of the Zionist looking into Lebanon. So you know, the Russian military who built those ATGM's were saying clearly that they don't even have a soldiers that can reach the expertise of Hezbollah fighters in those shoes. So you know, there's two things that can confirm to us that the Zionist had huge losses. One of course is that in the admittance of the Zionist in June 2025 they they said that they lost 1,000 tanks in both the battlefield in Gaza
16:54and in the battlefield in Lebanon and of course they the Israeli military has around only 2,000 tanks.
17:01And where the other thing that proves to us that they've lost even more since this battle happened is that we started seeing Merkavas not the latest versions the Merkava 4 but Merkavas 3. Those are like almost 10 year old. Uh so uh clearly uh the best tanks that they had were um you know very much hit in those battles in Lebanon and Gaza uh in those uh 2 and 1/2 years. And now they were having to use older stock.
17:34Um the other thing about those columns that you described you know Lebanon uh is blessed with a topography uh in the south that makes it uh it just that topography and geography of the south a defense mechanism. Okay?
17:53It's not a flat territory like Gaza. And it's huge territory. It's not a small uh strip like Gaza also. And when we look at the geography of the south uh there is clearly a few paths that any uh armored columns can go through. Uh it's not like they can fly these armored vehicles. They have to go either through the valley or try to go on top of ridges uh of mountains. And the ridges are full of uh villages and so forth. So uh they have no choice but to go through specific paths. And Hezbollah was ready for them because it's the logical paths.
18:34It's It's not no no It's not a genius thing that they they have to come up with some new ideas of how to invade South Lebanon. It's the same repeated tactics that they've had to use since uh the 1970s as you mentioned. And Hezbollah had prepared a lot of uh ambushes, a lot of uh mines, a lot of IEDs, and uh they managed to destroy these columns as they're advancing.
19:01Um and uh uh also uh when we look at uh you know the videos of Hezbollah taking out these tanks, it's clear that uh from all sides Hezbollah had spotted and knew the advancements were there coming.
19:20The last thing I would say is that today as the Israeli military was leaving the outskirts of Khiam village, they walked into a minefield or an IED field, improvised explosive devices, and it blew up on them. This is after the ceasefire. And according to Israeli sources, they have many wounded in this battalion, including those who have lost limbs. And I would say every time the Israelis admit something like severe wounded or so forth, it means that they have dead, but they're not truthfully telling about it.
20:06>> I want to talk about, you know, if maybe the you would quibble on the word the resurrection of Hezbollah, because you had the pagers, these were these exploding pagers that Israel used to maim hundreds of Hezbollah. Not necessarily fighters, you know, they might be accountants, they might be but I think Israel kind of wrote has been perhaps the United States wrote Hezbollah off after that. Explain that incident and how Hezbollah proved so resourceful and effective in countering this latest invasion by Israel.
20:47>> Well, the first thing that we need to point out is that according to international law and the laws of war, the booby trapping of civilian objects is a war crime. And so, we know the Zionists are very proud of their war crimes, and they considered this a huge win, you know, booby-trapping these pagers, and intercepting the production lines of the companies that were selling these pagers.
21:21Having said that, as you pointed out also, hundreds of non-combatants were injured or killed in those attacks. The pagers are used heavily, of course, within the medical field.
21:36You know, doctors and nurses use pagers to receive their calls in the environments with no cell phones allowed.
21:45And you know, although it is a big loss and a lot of suffering happened, children that were around these pagers or or what have you were also injured or killed.
21:59We saw videos currently throughout this war released by Hezbollah of wounded men that survived the pager attacks.
22:12And that were actually on the front lines firing missiles, firing drones, and this shows you how much pride there is and how much conviction the Lebanese people and Hezbollah members have.
22:30Now, we look at the decapitation attack that happened against the leadership of Hezbollah >> This is just a this is the assassination of the head of Hezbollah, Nasrallah.
22:42>> Yes, and the much of their commanders >> And much of their command structure, right?
22:47>> Yes, in in 2024, and we can think of two things. One is that Hezbollah doing its engagement in Syria trying to stop the Wahhabi death squad hordes that were thrown by the CIA and them and the Mossad on Syria.
23:07Uh in that battle, it had to restructure itself and it became a semi-military with tanks and APCs. It also meant that in that 15-year war that every other intelligence agency in the world was able to uh draw up a chain of command for Hezbollah in those battlefield, the names of the commanders, uh their faces and what have you. So, by the end of that 15-year war in Syria, uh those intelligence forces that uh are allied with the Mossad and the Zionist uh knew practically the military structures of Hezbollah. And that is how the Israelis were able to assassinate uh the leadership of Hezbollah in 2024.
23:56Now, once that happened, uh Hezbollah had to switch back to being a guerrilla uh organization. Uh therefore, the structures had to be shifted back from a semi-military format to cell formations with uh leaders that are unknown, with uh you know, three-member cells and with a a a a kind of uh a non-hierarchical uh dispersed commands everywhere. And uh in fact, during the 15 months of the ceasefire, we saw a continuation of the Israelis assassinating known Hezbollah commanders. And those commanders were out on the streets in their cars normally and so forth. And this is only because Hezbollah had literally uh
24:47you know, retired.
24:49Right? Anyone that had any public face uh that was discovered during the uh war on inside Syria had to be retired and new structures and new leaders had to be put in and this is what drove the Zionists crazy right now and it also allowed Hezbollah to play this ambiguity very well and hide its capabilities so what the Zionists and the United States behind them thought that they have destroyed the structures of Hezbollah and that they have somehow destroyed all its military capabilities and lo and behold Hezbollah actually surprised them and surprised even the Lebanese people with the huge amount of ammunitions that
25:41it still had and the very very well organized defense lines and defense structures that it's you know played out here during this war.
25:55>> Two things I want to ask. First about the Lebanese government, they have expelled the Iranian ambassador even before this current assault the Lebanese government has been quite obsequious to Israel calling for negotiations which even before the negotiations negotiations that have apparently begun.
26:17I want you to talk about the role of the Lebanese government and then I want you to address the long-term demand by Israel that the Lebanese military disarm Hezbollah and that can at least you can comment on this but at least it's always been my understanding that that is because they are seeking to create a civil war within Lebanon.
26:42>> Well for the viewers let's start with the basics.
26:46I think it's very important to understand that there is no state called Lebanon And has never been a state called Lebanon that and the way we can judge states is a state has a monopoly over the use of force in its territory and control of its borders. And those things never happened since 1942 and the declaration of uh independence and chopping off Lebanon from Syria.
27:12So, you know, when we look at the another thing is that Hezbollah in the year 2000 when it liberated Lebanon, it became the first liberationist movement in the world in the history of humanity that liberated a country and didn't take control of the state. And that was a choice that Hezbollah did although it had the right as the liberators of the country to do so, but it did so not take a control of the government because it was hoping not to trigger any civil war right after uh spending decades fighting the occupied >> Laith, just for people who don't know, Lebanon is a mix of Christian, Sunni, Shia. Hezbollah is a
28:00Shia organization, but there's quite a heavy ethnic mix within Lebanon.
28:05>> Yes. Yes. And the other thing is of course that the confessional sectarian makeup of the government, the parliament, and what have you was imposed by the French in 1942 as they were leaving. And the number of seats per sects, you know, Christians, Druze, you know, Sunnis, Shias, what have you, is according to the percentage of the population in 1942 and the country was has not been allowed or did not want to have a census since then because actually today as we are speaking at least 50% of the population are Shia. and if there is a census done even if the confessional sectarian constitution is is maintained, Hezbollah
28:58will have 50 you know, a percent of the seats along with his Shia you know, partner Amal and then you add to it all the other parties that are allied with it and it will govern naturally. So, that's one thing. The other thing that we need to understand about the current Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, this man comes from a multi-generational treasonous family. His grandfather Salim Salam, which was one of the you know, elite of Lebanon at the end of the Ottoman era, went and bribed Ottoman land registers and defrauded the land owners in what is now the Hula Valley, the panhandle of Palestine that sticks up north and
29:51changed the ownership of those lands to his name and he was trying to do the same for much of the south of Lebanon, okay? And you know, fortunate for the for the Lebanese people, World War I broke out before he was able to defraud the rest of those villages that we're talking about Bint Jbeil, Khiam and and and others.
30:14And and so, once that happened, Salim Salam tried to sell those lands in the Hula Valley to the Zionist, the Jewish colonist, but the French authorities, because the Hula Valley was still part of Lebanon at that point or the French mandate, the French authorities refused because they the Hula Valley has a lot of the water coming out of the Golan Heights.
30:44And the so he ended up Salim Salam working with the Jewish colonization agency to bribe the French authorities, brought a bag of 30 million dollars, handed it over to the French occupation where they redrew the land map and handed over the Hula Valley to Palestine and the British Mandate in Palestine.
31:09And eventually he sold those lands to the colonist and you know, now we know Kiryat Shmona and all of those were built on the land defrauded by the grandfather of Nawaf Salam. Nawaf Salam himself >> let me let me just interrupt there because going back to documents from the early 1920s, the Zionists have always coveted southern Lebanon because of the water supply and because of the very fertile land. That has and and when they always talk about this security zone up to the Litani River. This is you know, over a century long project on the part of the Zionists. I just want to historically throw that in.
31:53>> Yes, you are right. And now you know, comes Nawaf Salam, the grandson of Salim Salim Salam.
32:01Nawaf Salam according to East German intelligence files was recruited by the Mossad in the 1970s, late 70s and were infiltrated the PLO youth wings in the universities to try to get them information and eventually was on the team of the president of Lebanon that came on the Israeli tanks into the presidential palace in 1982.
32:34Gemayel uh and Salam was on the negotiating team at that time in 1982-1983 to sign the normalization and surrender and peace with Israel. So, Nawaf Salam has been an agent himself since his student days throughout the occupation of Lebanon by the Zionist and now was brought back on again on the top of an Israeli tank and an American jet to finish the job that he attempted to start in 1982. And by the way, the president of Lebanon at the time um Gemayel his life ended with a bullet to his head by Habib Shartouni, a very famous Lebanese resister. And when you walk around Lebanon, there's always posters that say
33:32for every Gemayel, there's a Shartouni in Lebanon.
33:38>> Let's talk about this Israeli policy of fomenting civil war.
33:42That has just uh been a constant.
33:46Was I was actually in southern Lebanon with Lahad who was and you can explain who he was, an Israeli proxy.
33:55And when we talk when they talk about negotiations, the iron demand that Israel has is that Hezbollah be disarmed. Knowing that that would provoke what they want, which is an armed conflict. And and let's also characterize the Lebanese military because it's very weak.
34:13>> Yeah, well, look, the Zionist may dream that they can have a civil war in Lebanon or that they have a partner for such a civil war.
34:26Maybe they're still living in that delusions of of 1970s.
34:32Uh but uh, when we look at, uh, the possible, um, opponents of Hezbollah, let's start with the Lebanese military.
34:42Uh, the Lebanese military, more than 50 to 60% of the soldiers are Shia.
34:50Uh, the although the head of the Lebanese military is always appointed as a Christian.
34:56Uh, currently the, um, commander-in-chief is, uh, General Rudolph, uh, Heikal.
35:04And, uh, although he's under a lot of pressure, uh, he has refused up until now to, uh, try to, um, deem, you know, arm, disarm Hezbollah. And this is because he knows that, uh, if he attempts to do such a thing, that there will be a mutiny within the military, uh, and it will collapse. And in any case, the Lebanese military is very lightly armed.
35:31Uh, it doesn't have tanks. It has APCs.
35:35Uh, it doesn't have, uh, you know, missiles or drones. And it cannot last in a fight, even if the whole, uh, Lebanese military is unified behind, uh, the leadership, uh, which is not. So, uh, although the there's been multiple recordings or, um, testimonies about meetings between Nawaf Salam and Rudolph Hitler, uh, Rudolph, uh, Heikal.
36:03Um, it, it, it, those meetings almost, uh, descended into fistfights because Heikal is not willing to sacrifice the military for the aims of Nawaf Salam.
36:17Looking at the, uh, Christian supremacist parties in Lebanon, uh, the Phalangist or the Kataeb, uh, these parties are a of what they used to be.
36:29And you know, their their main backers are the Saudis. This is a crazy part. The Saudis are the main backers of the Christian supremacist parties in Lebanon and they they don't have much arms. They don't have many um men that are ready to fight and therefore they're not a possible opponent to Hezbollah that can challenge them. The last possibility is to somehow instigate Wahhabi death squads as happened in Syria to create trouble in the country and we already saw a few attempts of that. An invasion from the outside in the north of Lebanon right on the border of Syria after the collapse of the Assad
37:19government and the takeover by Al-Julani in Damascus.
37:23They attempted to invade in the north Bekaa Valley. The special forces of HTS known as the Red Bandanas.
37:33And at that moment the Lebanese military just withdrew and opened the door for these Red Bandanas.
37:41This is in 2025 to advance onto the Bekaa Valley and and what we saw is that the local clans not even Hezbollah picked up arms and repelled the Red Bandanas defeated them and advanced into Syrian territory. Took over three villages and were almost reaching Homs.
38:07And at that point the Lebanese army came and cut the route of the Lebanese clans in the north of the Bekaa Valley and the Israeli military sent its air force to uh know destroy the supply routes of the clans in the north of Lebanon to save uh the HTS red bandannas. So, I don't think that even Al-Julani uh and his death squads uh can uh defeat Hezbollah even if they bring them all to the border here with Lebanon.
38:41>> Where do you see this going? Uh I've covered many, many ceasefires established by Israel. Uh there's not one that they don't violate. Um you mentioned pressure from the Trump administration.
38:56Uh but it's pretty clear from the rhetoric out of Netanyahu's office that they're not done. What What What do you see happening?
39:06>> Look, this has been an ongoing 100-year war.
39:12Uh and it is anchored in Jewish supremacy.
39:16And it's anchored in imperialism that maintains that Jewish supremacy on the land of Palestine.
39:23Uh the Jewish colony wouldn't be able to last one day in front of the children of Gaza.
39:32If there isn't a non-stop financial, political, and military uh support for this Jewish colony. And uh we saw what we are seeing today is the end of uh Western hegemony as a whole.
39:53Uh and uh you know, everything that we saw with the genocide in Gaza and the wars uh since October 7th uh where the uh apex of this 100-year war uh in terms of the projection of power of the West and the Zionist colony. And from this point on, it is a retreat uh for both the empire as a whole and its favorite lap dog. Now, does that mean that it's going to end tomorrow?
40:28No. Does that mean that we're not going to have more wars? No. But it just means from this point on, it will be the Jewish colonist and their sponsors that are going to be suffering more than us.
40:41And with every new wave of this battle, it will be more suffering for the West, more suffering for the Jewish colonist and less for us until we're fully completely down from the apex moment that we saw with the threat of use of nuclear weapons against Iran, which the United States had to retreat from. So, when we look at this moment, you know, we we because we we saw all this 100 years before, sometimes we're unable to see what's coming. We feel that there's a routine, a repetition. But you know what? Uh Iran controls the Hormuz Strait right now.
41:27It controls 30% of the oil output and gas output of the world.
41:32Iran forced a ceasefire in Lebanon before it opened the Hormuz Canal and we have a new superpower arising. Does that mean the Israelis are going to just give up? Or the Americans are just going to give up? That's not what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is that we are living right now a historic moment.
41:51Uh probably the only comparative moment that we can look in our history to is that moment of the Tripartite Attack on Egypt by the French, the British, and the Israelis in 1956, which ended with the defeat of that Tripartite Invasion >> You're talking about the Suez the Suez crisis.
42:14>> Exactly and the end or the demotion of France and England the UK from being superpowers to being secondary powers under the you know control of the United States.
42:30What we're seeing today is the end of the superpower of the United States but there is no other European pole that can fill that gap. What is rising right now is a new world multipolar world that Iran is going to be one of the central poles of it and the axis of resistance including members like Hezbollah or Ansar Allah in in Yemen are going to be the victors in this the ones that are going to you know pick the fruits of this battle.
43:06>> Great. Thanks Laith.
43:08And I want to thank Milena Sophia and Max who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.substack.com.
43:18>> Thank you Chris.
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