Laith Marouf discusses the growing strength of Yemen's resistance movement 💪🇾🇪 and its increasing influence on the global stage 🌎. How this force is challenging the status quo 🔥 and what it means for international politics ⚖️.
#Yemen 🇾🇪 #Resistance 💥 #LaithMarouf #Geopolitics 🌍 #MiddleEast #GlobalPolitics 🌐 #InternationalRelations #Diplomacy 🕊️ #ConflictAnalysis #GlobalImpact 🌎 #DialogueWorks #YemenResistance 💪 #PoliticalPower 💬 #WorldPolitics 🌍
#Yemen 🇾🇪 #Resistance 💥 #LaithMarouf #Geopolitics 🌍 #MiddleEast #GlobalPolitics 🌐 #InternationalRelations #Diplomacy 🕊️ #ConflictAnalysis #GlobalImpact 🌎 #DialogueWorks #YemenResistance 💪 #PoliticalPower 💬 #WorldPolitics 🌍
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. Today is Wednesday, May 14th, 2025, and our friend Leith Barouf is back to us. Welcome back.
00:13Great to be with you, Nima.
00:16Leith, Donald Trump is in the Middle East and he went to Saudi Arabia and he's talking about many things in the Middle East.
00:28But here is what he said about Lebanon.
00:32There's a once in a generation opportunity to forge a Lebanon that is prosperous and at peace with its neighbors.
00:41And I think things can really happen there.
00:44What does he mean to be at peace with its neighbors?
00:51We know that Lebanon is not attacking anybody, but it's getting attacked by Israel.
00:56You've taken that.
00:58Well, basically, it's for Hezbollah and the resistance to give up and to acknowledge the supremacy of the Jewish colony.
01:07This is all the wars that we saw over the last 30 years in the region and even beyond that, all the way back to 1948.
01:18And every war since then has been about making sure the Arabs submit to the Zionist colony as a reality that they can fight back against.
01:29And so this is what happened to Syria for 15 years, the bombardment of Syria, the war on Syria.
01:36And as we see now, the takeover by the Wahhabi death squads of Damascus.
01:42And, you know, that's all that's requested of the Arabs is to acknowledge that they are less than human.
01:51That's what Arabs are forced to accept by the West and or be killed.
01:59That's the options that we have.
02:01And this is the only reason there will be always resistance to Zionism and the United States in the region.
02:10From what you're witnessing in Lebanon, what are they trying to do?
02:14Is that somehow similar to what the Biden administration did and before or they're somehow changing their strategy in Lebanon?
02:27Well, every day there is Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
02:32Yesterday we were down in our team in the south and we didn't have yet any idea where we're going to be filming.
02:41And suddenly just near us to two different attacks.
02:44We went to the first one.
02:46There was a farmer who had stayed in the village of Al Hula over the, you know, lost all his sheep and so forth.
02:57But he's, you know, a man that has six children.
03:00He needs to work.
03:01So he's been replanting his land, helping the other farmers replant their land.
03:06And they just decided to kill him.
03:07The Israelis with the three missiles from drones on his little scooter when he was driving a scooter in the field.
03:14So the, you know, we see that Trump is allowing Israel to attack Lebanon as much as it wants.
03:23And as we see with the ideas in the heads of the Zionists and the United States that they've now taken over Damascus,
03:33that they can now bully the Lebanese people even more with the Lebanese being cut off from their supply routes for resistance and military.
03:44And so I don't see the Zionists backing down and I don't see the United States stopping Israel from bombarding Lebanon.
03:54And in Saudi Arabia, he was asked by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia to lift all the sanctions on Syria.
04:06And it seems that he accepted.
04:08He said that he's going to lift all the sanctions.
04:11Do you see what Saudi Arabia, what does Saudi Arabia want from Syria?
04:20On one hand, you've heard that there's somehow concern about what's going on in Syria.
04:25And right now they're trying to normalize what's going on in Syria.
04:29Where does they, where do they stand in Syria?
04:34You know, obviously the sanctions on Syria were intended to suffocate the Syrian people and get them to revolt against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
04:49And to make them malleable, so poor and hungry that they'll take money from anybody and do anything.
04:55And that's what happened basically.
04:57This is how you destroy nations.
04:59And I am very glad that the United States is lifting the sanctions on Syria because they were illegal, immoral.
05:08It's a war crime anyways for 15 years.
05:12And maybe if the Syrian people's, you know, food security and their livelihoods are in a better condition,
05:22they'd be better at resisting American imperialism and Israeli colonialism.
05:28So I am not one that would have come out to say the United States should continue sanctioning Syria
05:37because of the Wahhabi death squads in control of Damascus.
05:41I am a Syrian and I've seen what happened to my people under sanctions.
05:45And using sanctions as a political tool is a war crime and it's inhuman.
05:53Now about Saudi Arabia.
05:55The Sauds and with them the Americans behind them and the British before that.
06:03But since the basically end of World War One, when really the British got control of Al-Hijaz,
06:12where Mecca and Medina because of the Hashemite family aligning with them and controlled Palestine.
06:19From that point on, the West has been trying to create, manufacture, mold a new Arab, a new Muslim, a new Jew.
06:32And as we saw, they have been successful in molding Jewish people into Zionist freaks.
06:39Okay.
06:40And they've been attempting for the last hundred somewhat years to do the same to the Arabic and in larger scope,
06:48the Muslim people as a whole.
06:50And what was standing in the way of creating a new Arab that is subservient to Western imperialism
07:01and a new Muslim that is also subservient to that imperialism is the history of the capitals of culture
07:11and politics in the Arabic world.
07:14Riyadh or Abu Dhabi or Doha didn't exist a hundred and somewhat years ago.
07:22The capitals of politics and culture in the Arabic world are Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Algiers and Sanaa.
07:31These are where the Arabic identity is formed and the history of rule,
07:39who rules the Arabic region is those capitals.
07:42So in order to get to that point of creating this new Arab and this new Muslim that is subservient to imperialism,
07:51those capitals had to be destroyed.
07:53Those peoples had to be denigrated.
07:57You know, the pride that was in the heart of an Iraqi or a Syrian had to be crushed.
08:04And this new Arab as we see that is now taking the lead, those Gulf monarchs that are now presented as the new Arab,
08:17are exactly the worst stereotypes that are in the mind of white man of what is an Arab.
08:24And they're willingly doing that.
08:26Just like the Zionists are the worst stereotypes of any anti-Jewish, comical Nazi thing that you can think about.
08:34And they're doing it willingly.
08:36And that's unfortunately where we are right now.
08:39And the Muslim people outside the Arabic world now, the only capital that is really still standing is Tahran, right?
08:51All the other Muslim capitals outside the Arabic world are under American control,
08:56whether it's Jakarta or Karachi or, you know, Lagos or Senegal, you know, it's Dakar, you know,
09:07all of those cities outside the Arabic world, all of those cultural capitals of Islam other than Tahran are now under American rule.
09:16So Iran now is going to have to fight this fight on behalf of all of the Muslims.
09:22Otherwise, Islam is going to go down the garbage chute like Judaism.
09:28Leith, do we know that there is a new report in the New York Times shows that how capable Yemenis were in fighting the United States?
09:42They have shut down F-16, F-35, which is so difficult to do and by their air defense systems.
09:54This report shows how difficult the operation was on the part of the United States when it comes to Yemen.
10:03Do you think that the United States is able to get back?
10:07Do you see this sort of attitude in the Trump administration or the Trump himself to get back to Yemen,
10:15or they're just done with what has happened between the United States and Yemen?
10:21Well, that report is clear that Yemen has advanced weapons that nobody knows about yet.
10:29And we've seen a few videos come out from the Yemeni armed forces over the last 48 hours hinting to all these new weapons that they have that they haven't announced yet.
10:39And a few hours ago, they targeted the Ben-Gurion Airport in the Zionist colony.
10:46So they're continuing their bombardment of the Zionist colony and the United States at least openly is not participating in hitting Yemen.
10:58Most probably American assets in the region will be used by Israel and everybody will pretend it's Israel doing it, bombardment of Yemen,
11:10just to safeguard American aircraft carriers and the major American air bases in the region.
11:17Because if this war would have continued in a direct confrontation, now it's being done by proxy.
11:24If this continued in a direct confrontation between Yemen and the United States,
11:27Yemen would have definitely sank some of these aircraft carriers.
11:31We were at the edge of having that happen.
11:34And the Al-Odeid main American air base in Qatar would have been next as a target.
11:41And this would have flipped the balance of the whole region.
11:46The United States wouldn't be able to produce air jets so fast to replace any and or aircraft carriers to replace the losses that would be huge.
11:57So will the United States go back to this war?
12:01Well, I think they never left it, but they're going to do it now in this proxy matter that I explained.
12:06And, you know, looking at what Trump just did in Riyadh in terms of, you know, I didn't talk about his speech,
12:21but he did hint to exactly what I told you, the creation of this new Arab, right?
12:25Wow, Saudi Arabia is so, like, open now.
12:29Nobody had to push them to do it.
12:31You know, they were good boys by themselves.
12:34And so it's clear.
12:38And while we're being told that Saudi Arabia, the then of Wahhabi fascism, is now the glorious multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society,
12:55they are projecting to us by the, you know, positioning of Al-Julani as the president of Syria and Al-Wahhabi groups control Syria,
13:08that Syria, the birthplace of multiculturalism and multi-secular, you know, sectarian coexistence in Arabic history,
13:18is now the hotbed of genocide and discrimination.
13:24You see, like, what they just did.
13:26And Yemen is going to have to now to deal with all of these realities in this physical isolation, geographic isolation.
13:36But as we see, it seems like North Korea, Iran, and maybe China are still helping Yemen build up its abilities.
13:48When it comes to Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, it's all about investments and the way that Saudi is going to buy weapons from the United States.
14:02But when you get, when you focus on what has happened and what does the United States want from Saudi Arabia, from the region,
14:13do you, in your opinion, what is the main objective?
14:18What is the main reasons of this sort of visit to Saudi Arabia?
14:24Is somehow normalizing, convincing?
14:28All of us remember Abraham Accords.
14:31And Donald Trump was talking about it in this visit.
14:34Do you think the main reason is that, is the Abraham Accords and what comes, how they can manage the situation in the Middle East?
14:43Because this is the new face of the Middle East.
14:46This is not something that Donald Trump has experienced before.
14:49You're taking that.
14:51Yeah, I mean, the Abraham Accords is, seems like they want Syria to sign them.
14:58And, you know, that will mean, you know, Lebanon will be left standing alone as a country that's on the border of occupied Palestine,
15:08that doesn't have normalization with this colony.
15:12And, you know, look at this, the Trump and the American empire as a whole, the British before them, they took these, what we call now the royal families in these Gulf countries from the desert out of nowhere.
15:34And they appointed them as kings and queens.
15:41And in return, they're supposed to give all the oil and gas to the West.
15:47It's, it's exactly what happened to indigenous people in, in the United States with the beads trade.
15:55I don't know if people know this beads trade.
15:57They, you know, they, the conquerors came with glass beads.
16:02Indigenous people didn't know how to know to make glass.
16:06They thought it's something precious and they were giving all their precious furs to the British and the French.
16:15Similarly, in South America, it was about mirrors.
16:19Glass, glass with a little bit silver on back of it were being sold to these indigenous people that didn't know what it is in return for their golds.
16:29So the modern oil trade with the Arabic people is exactly this.
16:37Those weapons that supposedly will be delivered to the Saudis, the Saudis will never use, number one.
16:43Number two is they will not really ever be delivered.
16:46And number three, if they're delivered stuff, they will be broken things.
16:50I mean, I lived through the first Gulf War 1990 in Riyadh and I saw how the bankrupt Patriot missile system was thrown on these Gulf countries to supposedly shoot down missiles when it's designed to shoot down aircrafts and is a heat seeking weapon.
17:12And it was already bankrupt the company.
17:14So what is required of these Arabs that are in control of these Gulf fields is to continue just taking prostitutes, drugs and broken things from America in return for giving them all their oil and gas and staying in power.
17:33That's all it is.
17:34These people don't represent neither the Arabic peoples of their own country or the Arabic people as a whole.
17:42And unfortunately, 100 years now of attempts of the Arabic peoples to liberate themselves, the revolutions in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and all of what we saw of the access of resistance have up until now failed.
17:59Leith, as we talk, Israel is attacking Gaza.
18:06They have used bunker buster bombs in Khan Yunus and do you see any sort of difference between Donald Trump and Netanyahu?
18:19Because it seems somehow there are some sort of differences between the two characters and the way that they want to manage the situation.
18:28How important is that if it if that exists?
18:32Yeah, it was 40 bunker busters, 40 GBUs fired on the courtyard of the hospital, the European hospital.
18:44I mean, the images are I can't anymore watch these videos.
18:51I just scroll through the news and I don't watch the videos because it's unbelievable.
18:57It's being done on purpose.
18:59Even now this, you know, we're all being told that we're it's normal to watch snuff videos, you know, when it was a criminal prosecution to watch snuff videos.
19:15But it's now a stream of them on social media and only because it's Palestinians, Arabs and general Muslims.
19:24We don't even count, you know, if it was a video of torture of a dog, we'll go to jail if we share it on social media.
19:33Anyways, and just two days before was the attack on a Palestinian journalist who was injured
19:44in an attempted assassination, sitting in his hospital bed, a drone goes through the window and assassinates him.
19:52I mean, this is beyond, you know, I think the wildest nightmares, not dreams of anyone on this planet of how, you know, despicable humans can be.
20:08This is what Zionists are doing.
20:10And it seems like, you know, Trump, although we hear about this fight with Netanyahu and what have you, I think it's all theatrics.
20:20There was the release of the American Israeli soldier that was captured on October 7th.
20:29We saw those celebrations in New Jersey flying the Israeli flag, very little American flags in the streets.
20:36And Trump was supposed to open the borders and let the aid come into Gaza in return and nothing happened.
20:45There was only four trucks of medicine delivered by the Red Cross minutes before the release of this American Israeli soldier.
20:54So why would Trump need to change the policy?
21:01I mean, the Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis will throw all their money at him no matter what.
21:09The Syrian state is under their control.
21:14The Jordanians and Egyptians will do nothing.
21:17So why would he try to confront Netanyahu?
21:23This is a big question.
21:24Like anyone that thinks that there is a difference between what Biden and Trump are doing or their positionality in Palestine, show us tangible things.
21:35I don't care about words.
21:37Words is all theatrics.
21:39We're all living in a reality TV show.
21:42This is what the news is in the West.
21:44It's worse than the Housewives of Atlanta in terms of how it's produced.
21:51But it's dramatized, you know, for mass consumption when in reality nothing changes.
21:58And the talks, Donald Trump is headed to Qatar and he's going to talk with Hamas indirectly it seems.
22:07What do they want from Hamas?
22:09Just the prisoners?
22:11Nothing beyond that?
22:13I mean, for the Israelis, they want the destruction of Hamas, the defeat of Hamas, the exit of Hamas from Gaza and basically to surrender.
22:26That's what the Israelis want.
22:27That's what Netanyahu wants and that's what he's pushing for.
22:31And otherwise, he would have stopped months ago if it was about return of the hostages, if not even the first week of October 2023 after Al-Aqsa flood began.
22:46Hamas already offered the release of all the Israeli prisoners in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
22:54And the Israelis rejected it three days after October 7th.
22:58And they've rejected it since then.
23:01So I think Netanyahu, since he has the green light from the West, he has the silence of the official Arabic states other than resistance groups on the ground like Hezbollah.
23:21There's nobody to fight back and defend the Palestinians.
23:27And therefore, he's going to continue on this path.
23:31I'm not saying that he's going to be successful, but you know, because today Hamas released two videos of operations against Israeli soldiers inside Gaza.
23:44One of them with a bunch of Israeli soldiers inside a house.
23:48They're setting up all these explosives to blow it up.
23:52And they were targeted with anti-personnel fire and the whole house exploded on top of the Israeli soldiers.
23:59Another is a patrol platoon was targeted again with mines under the ground of a booby-trapped field and they blew them all up.
24:13So Hamas is still resisting.
24:16The Israelis would probably be able to kill all the Palestinian civilians in Gaza before they can defeat Hamas.
24:27This is reality.
24:29Okay.
24:30And as we see, it seems like the Israelis are fine with killing all the Palestinian people.
24:36Do you think that the main problem is with the name Hamas or because if you think about the texture of the society in Gaza, it's not just you cannot separate Hamas from Gaza.
24:59This is the same thing.
25:02And do you think that just by just removing the name that would solve the problem in the mind of the West?
25:10Because we know that if you remember, China tried to bring all the factions together in those sort of thoughts.
25:18And do you think something of that category is possible to do?
25:24Is that doable if we assume that all these countries are interested in a ceasefire, in a peace talk between the two parties, between the United States and Israel on one part and Gazans and Palestinians on the other part?
25:43Well, Mahmoud Abbas is going to be in Lebanon, I think, tomorrow.
25:50And if I'm not wrong, he already is talking about disarming Palestinian resistance in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon.
26:02And the Palestinian Authority security forces have killed close to 70 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7th.
26:17So they are as criminal as the Israelis.
26:22And, you know, this is a man that has sold his soul, sold his nation to the Zionists and the Americans.
26:32I hope somebody here in Lebanon, if he has a, Mahmoud Abbas has a press conference that somebody throws a shoe on his face at least.
26:40But, you know, so there's no way you can have a unity with a collaborator.
26:49That's impossible.
26:50I mean, the Palestinian resistance groups, other parties that are part of the Palestinian Liberation Organization have for over a decade now been trying to create a unity government and include all the political parties in the PLO.
27:10And the dictatorship of Mahmoud Abbas is not allowing it to happen.
27:17So there's no, there's not going to be a change on that front as long as Mahmoud Abbas lives and the Palestinian Authority is still in existence.
27:25So what we see, you know, when you talked about how all of Gaza, you know, supports Hamas.
27:33People must understand that this doesn't mean that everybody is, you know, Muslim traditionalist that is a member of Hamas.
27:45But as Palestinian that you want to resist the Zionist colony, you look around, you see that the most successful project is Hamas.
27:55Therefore, you join them and you carry arms to protect your family and protect your country.
28:01That's how it works.
28:04Hamas now includes the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, not because everybody there supports the Islamic positionality of politics in Hamas.
28:17But they support the resistance and they see Hamas as the best way to carry arms and fight this fight.
28:25I don't know what to say here.
28:27I think the Chinese and the Russians have given up right now on this.
28:31And look at what's happening to the Palestinians inside Syria.
28:34You know, over the last few weeks, the HDS has been kidnapping leadership of Palestinian groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
28:47We saw that led to HDS finding the body of an Israeli soldier that was killed in 1982 in a battle with the Syrian military inside Lebanon.
29:00The most famous battle, you know, Nabi Yaqub battle, which was the largest tank battle since World War Two, where Syria defended and won this battle.
29:15Anyways, look, to see how these other Palestinian groups like PIJ, PFLP, Hamas and so on are being targeted everywhere they are, it's hard to think that suddenly Fatah will agree to negotiate and have a unity government there.
29:34Mahmoud Abbas is going to Lebanon on an invitation from the Lebanese government, you mean?
29:45Yes, yes.
29:46And he's coming basically to talk about the situation in the refugee camps.
29:50And you see, because the Israelis and the Americans ultimately want the naturalization of Palestinian refugees where they are.
30:01So to, you know, give Palestinians in Lebanon, Lebanese citizenship and then strip them of their right to return to their homeland in Palestine.
30:11And, you know, this is going to happen in Syria most probably also.
30:19And Syria holds a huge, almost half a million Palestinian refugees.
30:24And then that will be followed by the other Arab countries.
30:29And so if Lebanon is refusing to accept this, it will have to pay a price for it.
30:37I was wondering how they can consider any sort of credibility to Mahmoud Abbas because he's not representing anybody.
30:50I don't know if in the West Bank does he has does he have any sort of credibility in the West Bank right now?
30:58Zero credibility.
30:59Most of the Palestinians, even that are members of Fatah, don't see him as representative of them.
31:08You know, the people that are in Fatah right now and persist on staying in Fatah is like a family heirloom situation.
31:16Their dad was in Fatah, their grandfather was in Fatah, they're going to stay in Fatah.
31:20But it's not because they support Mahmoud Abbas and or his positionality.
31:25It's a very tribal situation.
31:27And we see a lot of the people that were involved in armed wings of Fatah that are not part of the Palestinian Authority security forces,
31:39all defecting basically and seceding from the control of Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah command.
31:48And therefore, inside the West Bank, in every refugee camp, every time there's confrontations between the Palestinian Authority
31:55and or the Zionist troops entering the cities and the camps, you see a unified fighting force, local unified fighting force
32:05that includes Fatah fighters, that includes Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the FLP, just like in Gaza.
32:11In Gaza, the Fatah armed twins are very involved in the fight also.
32:17So you see there's a shizim.
32:19Now, there's kind of like a fight over the brand of Fatah.
32:23And each person is saying, I represent Fatah.
32:26So it's really Mahmoud Abbas, his clique and the Palestinian Authority do not represent anybody.
32:34They probably don't even represent their wives.
32:41Leith, whenever I see Algiolani and the way that he's behaving, I remember Zelensky in Ukraine.
32:49Zelensky came to power.
32:51He had some sort of mission.
32:54He destroyed everything in Ukraine.
32:57And he's just on his way to get out of his position.
33:02Do you see the same sort of agenda behind Jolani and his team?
33:10Oh, yes, for sure.
33:12For sure.
33:13I mean, his number one job is to make Syria unable to affect anything around it.
33:23And that can only happen if Syria is broken up and is not self-sufficient, is poor, you know, is unable to produce culture.
33:35Look, you know, the most watched TV shows in the Arabic world, dramas and so on, are Syrian.
33:44The most listened to music is Syrian.
33:46Now that's all going to be done, gone.
33:49What is going to happen?
33:50What is Syria going to be doing if all of its architecture and its archaeological sites looted and destroyed?
33:57What happened to the museums?
33:58I don't know.
33:59Nobody is telling me what's happening to the museums of Syria.
34:02And if the country is broken up to a Kurdish colony and, you know, Druze in the south and Alawis in the east,
34:14what country will that be when all the resources are in separate places and the country doesn't have sufficiency in anything?
34:22Meaning just the few cities that are in the center that will fall, become Syria after chopping it up.
34:29So I think he definitely is doing exactly the job that he's asked to do, fragment the Syrian society, create so much distrust and hate between the groups that they cannot coexist again, create geographic isolation between the regions, make it that people can't travel.
34:52It used to be that after World War I that the Arabs were complaining about having to cross borders between each Arabic state.
35:00Now it's going to be that a Syrian from the coast can never see the east part and the guy from the east part can never see the south.
35:08And so it's it's that in itself molds new identities and that's what they're trying to do, erase the cumulative history, oral history and identity that exists in the region to make it into fragments of neighborhoods that can't protect themselves.
35:29Do you see that this the attempts on the part of Saudi Arabia and Turkey?
35:38Are they going to be able just to capture those parts of Syria that are now occupied by Israel?
35:46Do you think that that could be possible in a long run?
35:49Is that possible to just somehow force Israel to get out of those regions?
36:00I think it's impossible.
36:02You know, the Israelis are purposefully occupying all the watershed of the Golan Heights.
36:11That's their priority now because, you know, all the water actually in Lebanon, in Palestine and in South Syria and in Jordan.
36:23It comes from the watershed of the Golan Heights.
36:27So with the French giving the British and the Zionists the Hula Valley in north of Palestine, it used to be part of Lebanon, giving them that in the 1930s, you know, allowed the Israelis to take all of the water coming from the Golan towards the Hula Valley.
36:48And then with the occupation of the West Bank and that meant control of all of the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, which are all coming also the southern watershed of the Golan Heights.
37:06And now with the occupation of the Yarmouk River and all the slopes, the western slopes, the eastern slopes of the Golan Heights, that means control of that.
37:19So that's really what the Israelis want.
37:22Now, at any moment, they can cut off water from Syria, from Lebanon, from Jordan, from the West Bank and, you know, get the whole country to go thirsty.
37:35And this is where the, you know, kind of they're holding them from their sack, basically.
37:43Right?
37:44And that's, that's, they're not going to let go of that no matter what.
37:48Yeah.
37:49Just to wrap up this session, Dave, can we see Hezbollah right now in Lebanon doing something in the near future in terms of what's, because we know somehow they're trying to divide the government and Hezbollah and they're trying to put
38:12they're trying to put, they're trying to put a lot of pressure on the government in Lebanon.
38:17But do you see this division as it's getting more substantial, more, they would be more disconnected or you see somehow they're going to merge in as their sort of goals coming along,
38:38the goals on the part of Hezbollah and the government.
38:42How do you see this situation, the communication between the two parts in Lebanon?
38:47Yeah, we've had these local and municipal elections over the last week and they're going to continue for another week over the country.
38:57And this was supposed to be kind of a test of what is the popularity of Hezbollah and resistance now after the genocide in Gaza and the destruction of much of Lebanon with this war.
39:13And so I think the Americans and the Saudis and Emiratis and Qataris and everybody that put money into this election were hoping for a ground shift that will strengthen this puppet new president and puppet new prime minister in their fight with Hezbollah or trying to coerce Hezbollah into giving its weapons up.
39:37And of course, those were all delusions because the country is very divided because of the civil war and the wars after wars since the 1948 here that most people will not forget.
39:57They will not forget. They will not also flip sides easily.
40:02And in fact, the Hezbollah has won every municipal seat or mayor or position that they have controlled before the war and anyone that they, you know, ran a candidate in.
40:19Similarly, that is for Amal, the other Shia party that is aligned with them and the Druze, you know, Jumbalat family and their socialist party also were not shaken out of their power positions in the mountain.
40:39And finally, when we're talking about the Christian parties that the Saudis and Israelis were hoping that the Falange and the Kataib will have more seats, more municipalities and take away from the patriotic movement party.
40:55And that didn't happen. So there was no change in power in the municipalities and the cities and the mayoral ships.
41:05In fact, there was if there was any change we saw, we saw changes where anti imperialist took a few more seats.
41:15It's not a huge difference. But that shows you that the war didn't work if this was the intended purpose of it.
41:22And so what is, you know, President Aoun and Prime Minister going to do now?
41:29They can't. They don't have the political base to actually confront Hezbollah.
41:35And also they don't have the military base to do so.
41:39They don't have the military power to do so.
41:41And the military will revolt against them if they try to use it as a weapon against Hezbollah.
41:47And therefore we see the continuation of Israeli attacks on a daily basis in Lebanon as the only option and possibility of not allowing any reconstruction funding to come into the country to help it.
42:07So basically a continuation of the Caesar Act against Syria, the sanctions against Syria, but now only on Lebanon.
42:14So, yeah. Thank you so much, Leith, for being with us today. Great pleasure, as always.
42:21Talk to you soon, Neema.
42:23Talk to you.