Israel, Hamas truce delayed: What consequences on the Israel-Lebanon tensions?
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00:00 And with this delay, Doug, it's worth perhaps zooming out a little bit and looking at the
00:04 wider implications of the truce, assuming it comes into effect, because there was some
00:09 talk yesterday that the front between Israel and Lebanon might come as a result of this.
00:15 But we were talking to Iris Maglar, a correspondent in Jerusalem a short while ago, and she's
00:19 saying the skirmishes on the border today there remain pretty intense.
00:22 Yeah, they are intense.
00:23 And, you know, they've been seemed stepped up in recent days.
00:26 We've just had the Iranian foreign minister in the region.
00:29 He was actually in Beirut meeting with a lot of the senior leaders from what's been called
00:34 the Axis of Resistance, which are any number of Palestinian and non-Hamas groups that are
00:40 arrayed against the U.S. and Israel in what they see as a sort of an ideological fight
00:47 and cause.
00:48 So, yes, you have Hezbollah among them.
00:50 You also have the Kataib Hezbollah, which is based in Iraq, another branch of Hezbollah.
00:56 And you have any number of other groups.
00:57 We've spoken about the Houthis in recent days, the Houthis taking an Israeli-owned,
01:03 Japanese-commissioned freighter, basically landing a helicopter on it or landing a device
01:09 and basically taking it hostage as it was transiting the Red Sea.
01:14 And we've had the Hezbollah leaders themselves, while they're not party to this Israel-Hamas
01:20 agreement, that is, they did not sign on to it, it's unclear to what extent, if any, they
01:25 would feel that they're all engaged, that is committed to its terms, that they are bound
01:30 by its terms.
01:31 And my hunch is, as of now, if you're going to at least go literally by the papers, they're
01:35 not bound by its terms.
01:37 That is, until now, they've tended to not sit on the sidelines, but to wait it out and
01:41 not be as drawn perhaps as much into the fray as some had been predicting in the early days
01:45 of October after the Hamas attack.
01:47 They've been, I'm not saying they've been waiting it out, because there has been intense
01:50 fighting, but there isn't the full-fledged them being drawn into this war yet, at least
01:54 not on the scale that some had feared.
01:56 Could it yet happen?
01:57 Of course it could happen.
01:58 And this is precisely what the Iranian foreign minister has warned, especially with regard
02:02 to Hezbollah and the region there, that if this doesn't really work out, this humanitarian
02:07 pause agreement, this could spread further throughout the region.
02:10 All right, Douglas Herbert, as always, thanks very much indeed for your thoughts on that.