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We're to Lebanon now. In what appears to be a huge disagreement between the leaders of Israel and the United States, in a phone call on Monday, US President Donald Trump apparently told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop attacking the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Now, the US news website Axios quoted sources close to the president as saying that Trump called Netanyahu crazy during the phone call, saying that he was putting peace talks with Iran at risk. Trump reportedly claimed that Netanyahu would be imprisoned without his support. A reference there to the Israeli leader corruption trial. Well, today Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, they continued. And Israel says it will hit Beirut if Hezbollah
continues to attack. Israel carried out a number of strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, killing several people. The attacks came just hours after US President Donald Trump announced that both Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to dial back fighting. As part of that agreement, Israel promised not to target Beirut, rolling back a previous announcement, it was planning to strike Hezbollah units in the city. The cancellation was welcomed by people in the capital, many of whom had prepared to flee. Some praised the US president for stepping in to negotiate. Yesterday, Trump intervened to stop the strikes on the southern suburbs and southern Lebanon.
I hope the attacks on the south will stop and that the war will end. Others believe that Trump was only reacting to pressure coming from Iran, a close ally of Hezbollah. President Trump didn't want to stop the strikes. There was pressure from Iran and Yemen. The partial ceasefire was announced after a phone call between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump reportedly warned that Israel's actions in Lebanon were jeopardizing Tehran's talks with the US. But Israel's defense minister has warned that whatever agreement was made, it fully depends on Hezbollah not attacking Israel.
We will not accept firing on Israeli communities and will act accordingly. And this was also the message in Prime Minister Netanyahu's conversation yesterday with the US president. So far, skirmishes have been limited to southern Lebanon and there is cautious optimism that Israel and Lebanon will be able to hammer out a more comprehensive ceasefire deal during talks in Washington. Well, I'm joined now by Alan Ay. He spent four decades in the US foreign service. He was a key member of the US nuclear negotiating team for the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran. He is now a distinguished diplomatic fellow at
the Middle East institute. Mr. Good to have you with us. Um, Axios and ABC are reporting that President Trump erupted at Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's escalation in Lebanon, reportedly screaming, and I'm I'm quoting here, "What the f are you doing?" Was this President Trump restraining an ally, or was this an admission that Netanyahu has been driving events all along? Well, Brent, I would take anything coming out of this administration with a grain of salt. I don't necessarily believe that's what happened, but certainly President Trump has a vested interest in showing that he's seeking to
reestablish some type of ceasefire in Lebanon. But the underlying facts are that we've reached the point where there's a bifurcation of interests in the region between Israel and the United States. The United States wants to cut its losses and get out of there as quickly as it can. Israel still wants to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran and also disarm Hezbollah. So that's the key event, not so much profanity or shouting, the fact that there's a fork in the road now and Israel's going one way and the US is going the other. And where is Iran going? I mean, it seems that Iran has made a Lebanese ceasefire. They've made it part of any wider understanding with the United States and haven't they also
successfully turned the Hezbollah front into leverage over President Trump's entire Iran policy? Well, they see Lebanon and the support to its proxy Hezbollah as part of an ongoing battle between uh the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other. So support for Lebanon is not a chip or for Hezbollah is not a chip that they're willing to deal away later. They realize that regardless of what happens in terms of the current hostilities, Israel will seek trying to topple the Islamic Republic and they want to preserve an asset that's spent decades building up, Hezbollah. So they see Hezbollah as an indivisible part of what it's trying to do with strategic deterrence in the region. I know that you argued earlier this year that Iran
may be too weak, not too strong to accept American demands on its nuclear program. With that in mind, um I'd like for us to listen to what the US Secretary of State said earlier today before a congressional committee. Take a listen to what he said about um yeah, Iran diplomacy and that nuclear program. Now, we are in talks, and I say talks because talks with Iran are not like talks with Switzerland, okay? They're very different. They require the use of intermediaries unfortunately. But there is the prospect before us which could happen today. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen next week that for the first time certainly in my memory they have agreed to negotiate aspects of
their nuclear program that just a month ago or just a year ago they were refusing to even mention much less enter into discussions about. Now Mr. You helped negotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. When Marco Rubio there says that Iran is now willing to talk about things that it wasn't ever willing to talk about before, what in the world could that be? I mean, and do you believe the Secretary of State? No, I don't believe the Secretary of State. I believe the situation is as it's always been. Iran is willing to talk about accepting constraints on its nuclear program in exchange for concessions from the West. That's always
been the case. Additionally, the red lines that Iran has had haven't changed at all. They will never give up what they see as their right for indigenous enrichment on Iranian soil. They're not going to dismantle their existing nuclear facilities. They might be willing to export some of their highlyenriched uranium or all of it perhaps to a third country and they could well be willing as we saw before the war started to accept suspension of enrichment on Iranian soil. But no, I don't believe Secretary Rubio and he says Iran due to US pressure is now more consiliatory about its nuclear program. If anything, they're less consiliatory because they have more leverage over the US than they did before the war.
Let me, if you would, play devil's advocate for a moment. Trump's supporters, they could say that former JCPOA negotiators such as yourself have a professional stake in proving that the president's approach was doomed from the start. Is there some truth to that? Well, I don't think so. But then again, if I were like that, I wouldn't admit to it. But here's the reality. What President Trump calls the deep state is what I call a professional bureaucracy. I've worked for the US government since Reagan was president. Republicans and Democrats, and I and my colleagues in the State Department and the intelligence community, we're professionals. We work regardless of our own personal political beliefs.
Paradoxically, President Trump is the first president to try to politicize what up until now has been an apolitical foreign policy apparatus. And that's one of the many reasons why today's foreign policy apparatus in the US is far less effective than it's ever been because he's driven out expertise and instead replaced it with ideological loyalty and personal feely. Let me pull it back to Lebanon just for a moment. Um, if Israel believes that Hezbollah is using any ceasefire or any pause to regroup and Iran believes that Israel is using negotiations as cover to keep striking Lebanon,
why should either side trust an American brokered arrangement that appears unable to survive even 24 hours? Yeah, there's trust doesn't exist anywhere in relation to anybody. Any agreement that is fashioned will last only as long as all parties who are a party to it derive benefit from it. Okay? There is zero trust between any of these two countries, US and Iran, Israel and Iran. Sometimes perhaps Israel and the US because the relationship is transactional. So what's key is do all sides of an agreement derive benefit? If that's the case, people will likely stay in it. As a diplomat yourself, for Lebanese civilians who have heard repeated announcements of ceasefires and yet they've, you know, still been the
victims of drone attacks, is there any reason tonight to believe that diplomacy is actually protecting them? No, it's the exact opposite. It's providing a cover for them to be slaughtered. You know, like the Kenyan saying, when elephants fight, it's the grass that loses and there's a lot of trampled grass in the Middle East, in Lebanon, in Iran, in the GCC countries. So, no, diplomacy hasn't really been given a chance by any country so far. That's one of the problems. And before I let you go, do you think that President Trump, because of what is happening right now with Lebanon and with the Iran talks, do you think that a change in strategy in policy could come sooner rather than later?
I think President Trump desperately wants to disentangle himself from the morass he's created with the Iran war. Even though we've had tremendous military victory, it hasn't translated into any strategic success. And so now he wants to cut his losses and leave. Unfortunately, he has to get the straight of horses open first. And the only way that's going to happen is with Iranian sufference. And that's the problem he faces. He's got to put something on the table that is enough for Iran to be willing to try to reopen the street. Alan, distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute. Mr. Heir, we appreciate you taking the time to talk with us and sharing your insights on this developing story. Thank you.
And we are joined now by Dalia Schindllin. She is political analyst and fellow at the Century Foundation. She's joining us now from Tel Aviv. You know, so we have these reports here of some very strong language that Trump used with Netanyahu on his call. Do you think that this is a sign of a structural break in USIsraeli alignment or just temporary friction between these two leaders? I would be very cautious about assuming any one incident is a structural break. There have obviously been tensions and even divergence of both opinion between the two leaders and even policy aims for months and in many ways even before
Trump took office. It was basically President Trump for example who in pressured or forced Netanyahu into two different ceasefire arrangements in Gaza and they have taken different positions sometimes. We also know they had frankly different interests in how the war in Iran would be waged and so these kinds of things happen and they are still very much coordinating. So I don't think that one incident as exploitive laden as it was is the beginning of a structural breakdown but rather that they've had some very significant difficulties over the last phase and this is one more example. I don't think this is necessarily a tipping point but I think we're seeing a long slow and drawn out
change in the nature of the US Israel relationship that will probably outlast both Trump and Netanyahu. I want to pick up on one specific point in the call um and ask you how you think Trump's explicit references to Netanyahu's legal issues influences or might potentially alter the power dynamic now between Washington and Jerusalem. I don't think he said anything that Netanyahu wasn't aware of in terms of the dynamics between their relationship. But I also think that if that particular report is correct, uh, it's probably overstating Trump's actual power. I mean, Trump certainly, it would be in character to say that I'm the one keeping you out of jail, but it bears very little on the actual reality. I mean, I went to the courthouse today.
Netanyahu is sitting there on trial giving testimony. Yes, of course, he's trying to get out of it. He's always asking the justices to defer or shorten any given hearing. But Trump has frankly no influence on that process. So if that's actually what was said, it sounds a lot more like Trumpian bluster. I don't think Netanyahu would be particularly rattled by it. And we have also denials from the prime minister's office about the nature of the conversation and whether that particular part was actually said. No matter which way you look at it, we do know that uh Netanyahu is under pressure at home ahead of an election that shows him, you know, not doing well, in fact, losing in the polls. How do you think his, you
know, this defiant public stance that he has can be reconciled um with his reported compliance during private calls with Trump? I think that the image that these calls are very defiant um is something that Netanyahu would gain from if people believe them. Certainly his base wants to see him taking a tough line uh in terms of Israel's freedom of action on the front withah. That is a very sore point right now in Israel because people in the north are suffering from uh you know kbbala's fire and drone fire and soldiers are dying and you know needless to say Israel is doing grave damage in
Lebanon but from the Israeli perspective u there is a strong concern that Netanyahu is constraining its military action there because of Trump's pressure. So, if it gets reported in a way that he was tough with the American president and was defiant somehow, that would probably play well for him. Except that I think that it's going to be harder to convince Israelis, including his supporters and especially those who live in the north where he had lots of supporters in the past. It was a very strong area for right-wing voting. It's going to be hard to convince them that he was really so defiant because they're looking a lot more at actions right now. again, especially people who live in the
north or anybody who is, you know, feels very close or in solidarity with what's going on in the north that Netanyahu is, you know, I maybe is talking defiantly in his public portrayal of that call, but ultimately he's he backed down. He and the defense minister backed down from their statement yesterday morning that they were going to start bombing targets near Beirut and they just didn't do it. Uh, so I think people are going to be watching that in a way more than his actions. And he is under a tremendous amount of pressure. We don't know where any of this is going yet. Um, as you pointed out, he's not doing well in polls, but he's also not doing too poorly. We should be cautious about
assuming that he's not doing well in polls because in fact, he's doing about as well as he really ever was after the 2022 elections, but he's doing as well as he was before October 7th. He doesn't need to do that much better to win. he needs to win back, you know, a single-digit percentage of voters. And so, I think that's who's in play right now, and those are the people he's trying to so-called impress. Um, but it could very well be that they cannot be won back, partly because of how these things are playing out in the sense that he has given up control over Israel's sovereign actions and freedom of activi, freedom of action.
I mean, the White House for its part, it clearly views the Israel Lebanon uh border clashes as a direct threat to the broader US Iran ceasefire. Remind us, if you will, what's at stake for both the US and also for Israel. Well, I think this is that this touches on the diverging goals of the war. There's very little question or at least there seems to be a consensus uh among anybody who understands Trump that he did not want the US to get embroiled in a long war in Iran that he had the Venezuela model in his mind. Get in, get out, show a stunning success. He may have been convinced or he may have come to believe partly because of Netanyahu's urging that the regime would fall
quickly. And that certainly seems to be what he wanted and he doesn't he seems very reluctant to have this war continue. Netanyahu's aim reflects a lifelong commitment to toppling the Iranian regime, a lifelong commitment to complete destruction of Iran's nuclear uh program and its ballistic missile program and its support for proxies. These are enormous goals that apparently could not be won through a short war. Therefore, Netanyahu doesn't look like he was particularly happy about the ceasefire which probably essentially also imposed on him back in April. and public opinion, I should say, in Israel was very disappointed in the ceasefire
because those goals hadn't been achieved. And so it seems like what America really wants, especially given how many times President Trump has extended this ceasefire, is to get to an agreement. And Israel was never happy about the emerging outlines of the agreement as it's being reported. if we are, you know, if we have anything like the basic ideas that are out there for the ceasefire that will move apparently into some sort of a longer term deal with Iran and the US over Iran's nuclear program. you know the basic understanding of people both in Israel and even among you know Iran hawks in the US is that it's not that different from the basic framework of the JCPOA the deal signed by Barack Obama and you know and the other great
powers back in 2015 to limit Iran's nuclear program which Israel loathe and Netanyahu led the charge against it at the time. So they obviously have somewhat diverging interests here. Dalia Shindlin uh joining us from the Century Foundation from Tel Aviv. Thank you so much.
