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The videos are very high quality because they're easier to make with AI models. They push on a lot of current cultural memes and jokes. It makes it very relatable and easy to understand, and people love that. Short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. Today, President Trump says Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatah Ali Hami was killed in the attacks. THE Pentagon is weighing a takeover of that island as a way to force the reopening of the street of Hormuz. Iran begged for this ceasefire and we all know it.
Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on. I'm Venanisha Rainey and this is Iran the latest. It's Tuesday 19th of May 2026. We're now on 81 days since the war first began and 41 days since the ceasefire was declared. Well, the war was scheduled to restart today. That's according to Donald Trump, but he says he's postponed his planned attack on Iran at the request of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. That's because serious negotiations are now taking place. According to him, he said that he told the US armed forces to stand down for now, but had also warned them to be prepared to go forward with a
full largecale assault of Iran on a moment's notice in the event that an acceptable deal is not reached. He went on to say, "This deal will include importantly no nuclear weapons for Iran." So, that's the big picture status of the war. We are still in the holding pen. Today, we're going to look at some different theaters in this conflict. Later on in this episode, I'll be looking at what's going on in northern Israel and what they're doing to cope with the growing Hezbollah drone threat there. But first, I want to look at the information war. Now, if you're like me and you spend a lot of time on Donald Trump's truth social account looking for statements like the one I read you, you
may have noticed quite a lot of AI stuff recently. There have been a series of videos, for example, over the past 24 hours endorsing fellow Republicans standing for various positions across the US. There have also been pictures of aliens, interstellar warfare, and a zombie Gavin Newsome, the governor of California. Of course, none of this is new. In recent months, Trump has circulated AI created images and videos that depict himself as a pope, a warrior, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and this is all part of a wider trend, right? AI stuff is now everywhere. And the Iran war has arguably been the first AI conflict. We've previously looked at how AI is being used by the US and Israeli armed forces on the battlefield.
But today, like I said, I want to look at how it's being used online in this information space. Earlier, I spoke to Talhagen. He's an information warfare analyst and media literacy lecturer who specializes in exactly this stuff. We spoke about some of the worst examples from this conflict and also the significance of the breakdown in people's trust in what they see online. Here's our conversation. Tal, welcome back to Around the Latest. We last had your woman's podcast was battle lines, so I suppose welcome to Around the Latest. Last time we spoke, we were discussing misinformation and online disinformation in the Gaza war.
Now we're in the Iran war and there has been an absolute explosion of AI videos specifically, but also I think distrust of any image that you find online these days. That sort of fog of war is even more intense I felt during this conflict than during previous conflicts. Um, you know, we've now got like AI slop and slopp all these terms that we can get into during this chat. just give me your sort of overall impression about what it's been like sorting through the world of online misinformation over the last few months. So really uh it kind of started before the outbreak of the war on February 28th. You could say towards the end of January to the end of February, we started to see a lot more different
types of false reports that the Americans are about to attack, the Israelis are about to attack, Iran's about to attack, basically depending on who the activist or supporter was. Uh these are the types of false information that was coming out the moment. Then once in a while you would see different types of imagery of fake explosions or explosions from different time periods being reused to say that this is the beginning of the conflict. Uh but really after February 28th when Israel and then the United States initiated uh air strikes on Iran on various different types of military infrastructures that is really when the absolute tidal wave of false information started to spread throughout all of different types of
social media chats uh every which way. I mean, I was monitoring the news almost 24/7 at that in the first few days of the war and maybe for the first two weeks and my feeds were just entirely full of false information as it was almost impossible to understand what was actually happening on the ground. Uh whether the war was going in the US and Israel's favor or Iran's favor because almost everything that was filling up our feeds was false information because that false information was vibrant. It was attractive. It was interesting to watch and then because that's what was interesting for people to see. That's what started to fill up all of our feeds.
Yeah. I guess and that's where the algorithm has even more of a delriious effect because as you say it sort of picks up these things that people are lingering on. They're interested and they might be thinking that's fake but for the algorithm they're lingering. They're interested so it will keep serving it up more. And these AI videos I mean they've got millions of views. Just a few examples. Iranian missiles exploding on the Tel Aviv airport. uh US soldiers being held at gunpoint by the Iranian military. Iranian military facilities being destroyed. I know there were also satellite images going around
of an American radar in Qatar that been destroyed by an Iranian drone strike. An absolute deluge of misinformation. I wonder if there's an example that you want to come back to that you found particularly striking from the last few months. One that I found really interesting was when they started uh with in different individuals or governments. One of the things that's very hard sometimes to figure out is exactly who is behind this disinformation, the purposeful spread of false information. Whether or not it's uh individual actors and activists or it's a government entity, that's not always easy to prove. And there are entire organizations and companies that focus on that. But one interesting thing
was satellite imagery because the open source intelligence community, one way that they and myself have tried to understand what's actually happening on the ground is looking at satellite imagery. And whoever is behind this type of false uh publications, they started also putting out AI satellite imagery, some of it that looked really, really, really realistic. And so it became much harder for investigators to actually understand what was happening on the ground because of this false imagery. the attack that you mentioned uh in Bahain, I think it was on a satellite dish during the strikes on the American bases that actually happened like the site was actually struck and like a few weeks later we actually got
satellite imagery and it showcased it destroyed. We knew that the base was struck based on geoloccation data and verification but we didn't have imagery of it and people need imagery. they need to see something destroyed. And so that's where the AI imagery came into play because it gave people something to look at. Uh and they couldn't wait. They couldn't wait a few weeks for the real imagery to pop up. The satellite imagery is really interesting because we did have satellite images at the beginning of the war, but since then there's been like a near total blackout, right? A lot of the American companies have been told to withhold satellite imagery due to
national security reasons. How problematic has that been for people trying to debunk or prove that things did or didn't happen? It can be very hard to get an overall sense of really what's happening on the ground. Uh in Iran in general, the type of internet connections are heavily restricted in regard to what actually gets out of Iran. So we almost had no information from there. In Israel, we're mainly restricted when it comes to military sites or strategic sites being struck. So then we don't know if they're being struck or not because no videos or photos usually come out from there. Uh and satellite imagery essentially allows the common person, the average citizen to understand what's actually happening
on the ground. But with the removal of that capability, it makes it much harder. Now, one response to this is, well, that's okay. At the end of the day, if I'm an American citizen, I want to protect my troops and assets on the ground. One issue that it brings up for the average citizen, especially in democratic societies, is that in order for us to know how we are to approach our elected leaders in regard to this war, whether we think it should continue or not continue or we think that devastating uh horrific uh things have happened that require consequences, we can't know how to interact with our leadership because we don't know what's actually happening. I think one um
particular example that sticks out to me is the strike on the Minab school which happened on the very first day of the war. There was still satellite imagery coming out from that. There was a real fog of war around that because the Iranians were clearly trying to make a big deal out of it, but we know that strike did happen and Osent has put together a picture of how that happened with an American Tomahawk missile. Although the Americans officially say they're still investigating it, it seems relatively conclusive from multiple mainstream media reports. But there were a lot of allegations that the images of the cemetery in Minab had been digitally manipulated, that images of people
rallying in Iran had been digitally manipulated. Can you just talk us through some of the things that you saw around that attack and how you were sort of sifting through what was true and what wasn't? Yeah. So, I remember when the Minab strike occurred, it started to really fill our social media feeds. One thing that came out when it comes to the lack of information is that people are talking about children that were killed. It's not enough anymore in our current information spaces for just to hear about dead children. We have to see dead children. And so that's why a lot of AI imagery of dead children started to pop up because we needed to have an imagery.
And so that was then also used to say this is like it's false information that there was no strike on the school because of these AI images. Uh the cemetery is also a great example. That was something that I debunked because essentially I was able to prove that the cemetery was real because what had happened there actually interestingly enough is it's another example of one of the issues that we face today is the over reliance on LLM's large language models which are chatgi and all these others where we don't understand their capabilities and their limitations. And therefore when Grock the uh ex or formerly known as Twitter was asked where the photo of the Minab cemetery was actually taken, it started
to say that it was from India or the Philippines or different places in South Asia. And it never showed a source. It never actually showcased any proof. It just said it was from there. And this was used as proof that the image was fake. I went ahead and I was able to actually pinpoint exactly where the photo was taken and find multiple different examples of the image from different angles to prove that it was taken from there. But it required a lot of work where all people had to do is just ask the AI, is this real? And they just believed it as in they didn't trust me where I had all this verified information that they could check themselves. Instead, they were just heavily reliant on whatever they wanted
to believe. Uh because as you said in the fog of war, what happens really in war, one of the biggest issues isn't really the fog of war. It's the partisan reactions that people must have as in you either have to be for this side or for the other side. You can't be non-bipartisan because if you're bipartisan, you're for the enemy cuz you're helping them. You know, me as an Israeli when I was looking at that case and I prove that um the cemetery photo is real, that the bu building was actually struck, then some of the reactions are, you know, like why are you helping the Iranians? But it's not about helping the Iranians. It's about ensuring that we as citizens know the full picture and that's all that really
matters at the end of the day from my perspective of that we all need to understand the full picture. And as you said, it seems pretty conclusive what occurred and we're still waiting for the official American response. I don't know if they ever gave one about exactly who was responsible. The Iranians were very clear from the get-go. It also helped their media efforts against the United States. Uh but it was a very interesting case study of AI being used to debunk information which wasn't true. using of AI imagery of this partisan reaction to these types of events. How damaging do you think Grock specifically is because so much of this sort of information warfare and then
also our gut instinct to try and debunk it or question it or criticize it. That's all happening on X these days and Grock is right there. You can just ask it a question. You tag it for those who don't know how it works. You know, you just tag Grock and you say, "Is this real?" or "Where did this come from?" or "Is this person lying? What's the evidence for this?" and Grock will come back with an answer. As you say, it doesn't always source it and we don't know exactly where it's getting its answers from a lot of the time. How damaging has that been for someone like you who puts in the hard graph to try and prove whether something is true or false?
Grock is not unique in its ability to be damaging. As you said, what is unique is that it's directly connected to the platform. As in Facebook or YouTube or Tik Tok and Instagram don't have this type of feature and people like to be spoonfed. They like as easy as possible to get their information. And so Grock allows them to very easily get this information without then going to chat and opening another tab. And Grock has been very difficult for me handling it uh as a researcher because for some reason we still have a misunderstanding of how gro actually works. I wrote an entire paper on this talking about uh it's called AI and factchecking when probability replaces evidence and
essentially in that piece I talk about essentially how LLMs actually function. They're essentially b big uh statistical models that are doing just probability. They don't know anything when you ask it for example is an apple a fruit. It doesn't know that an apple is a fruit. It's simply looking statistically what category do we always see apple appear in and it always appears in fruit. Therefore statistically it has to be a fruit. That's how it's doing the model. It doesn't know anything. And so when you have these types of events that are happening in real time especially with wars where you don't have all the
information easily accessible Grock doesn't know what to do. So it just has to uh take any information that it gets. So if everybody on the community or on Twitter, the majority of people are saying that the responsible party for the strike was Iran, then Grock will most likely say that Iran was responsible. And the second that you everyone starts correcting Grock and saying that it's America, then everyone will say then Grock will say it's America. But it doesn't it'll constantly just change its opinion based on what information you give it. There was another example that sticks out that Netanyahu putat a video and everyone accused him of having an extra finger and then some people said he was dead. What did you make of that? What
did you make of that video and all the allegations that came out of it? So, I remember when the video u was first published and people started, you know, at first I didn't realize how bad it was going to get. I ignored it at first. It was one of those verifications that I didn't even talk about it. I thought this is beneath me to even deal with this, but then it's it went really viral and people were believing it. And there are some people to this day that still believe it. Yeah. We've had an email from a listener about it. It speaks to the misinformation, doesn't it? Because once that seed of doubt is out there, there are some commentators I still to this day who still like are convinced every video and everything is
fake. And I looked at the video from an expert point of view as an AI analyst and something that I do daytoday. I found nothing that was out of um ordinary. I looked at everything that was rare. But what people do is they uh they focus on one tiny little error in the video or something that doesn't really make sense but it can be explained away and that becomes that becomes a story. And so that's what we saw with Netanyahu. And also one issue that happens and this happens a lot with online communities as in no matter what you say they're always going to go to their opinions and I see this a lot with online communities where that essentially most people who operate online they have a core belief system is bad is bad Iran is bad these very
simplistic core identities and no matter what they see in front of them it has to align with that part of that core belief system we've seen these insane propaganda efforts ramp up during this war from Iran We've had things like Lego videos from a company, Explosive Media, run by a guy called Mr. Explosive. I'm sure you've seen lots of interviews with him. What do you make of those videos? I think they're a really fascinating take on how propaganda uh is more effective nowadays. I remember when I was a little kid watching stopotion Lego animations on YouTube as in Lego has always been something that we've all kind of been
attracted to that's been interesting to look at. you had the Lego movies that came out and so it's easy to digest from an adult perspective and also as a kid. So kids and adults now can both digest a piece of propaganda. The videos are very high quality because they're easier to make with AI models. Uh and it's easy to digest the message. The messages are very simple in those videos and they push on a lot of current cultural memes and jokes and things that we have. And so it makes it very relatable and easy to understand and people love that. And I think as a propaganda tool, it's incredibly effective. American propaganda in response to that has been more these sort of lots of black and white grainy footage of boats
being blown up, strike targets, often with like top gun style music or that kind of military fire power feel to it. Yeah, you could say that they're both kind of like the two sides of different coins. I would say that the Iranian propaganda, again, it's not from Iran, but the Iranian propaganda, just a lack of a better term, is much more accessible to large portions of society, as in from little kids who can watch these videos all the way up to grown-ups. While the American propaganda is centered on a specific type of like gamer online niche where I mean and forget grainy footage, they also putting Call of Duty footage like they splice in between to make it fun like a game. It's a video game. It's cool. It's
interesting like Call of Duty and Battlefield footage. So it's these two, but we're interesting that the propaganda is turning into what the internet culture is. Who do you think is winning the information war in terms of this around conflict? It's a good question. don't really know but I would say that it seems more like the Iranian propagandas has been much more effective than American or Israeli uh simply because it seems like their type of propaganda is centered on very very general themes of progress and justice and fighting for the little guy and also the amount of fake news that is put out that is specifically of Iranian propaganda um has been immense. the I mean the type of information that I've
been debunking I mean I debunk everything on my feed both from official IDF or government accounts all the way up to just Israeli activists but the type of information that is not just garnering the most amount of views but also is the most horrific in terms of miss and disinformation is coming from the Iranian side and they're winning in terms from uh people perspective in terms of viewership and the amount of people that are viewing that type of content. Does it worry you that it's dehumanizing conflict? It's something that's been very worrying to me in the past few years. I've written about it a few different times. Uh as a researcher, I've become quite desensitized to a lot of very horrific uh videos and
images, but that's because of my work uh where I'm trying to verify um how victims were killed or where they were killed. We've become incredibly desensitized in the past um I would say 101 15 years to violence. If you thought about what I said earlier in the conversation is how it's not enough to hear about dead children in a school. I need to see it. With the Iranian propaganda, there's such strong anti-semitic tropes being evoked in all of that. And we see in the Lego videos, you know, hidic Jews running around. And I mean, they specifically say Israel controls America. I was reading about um pro-regime propaganda networks on X sharing AI generated posts depicting Orthodox Jews leading US soldiers to war or celebrating American deaths. There's
been an absolute explosion in that online, hasn't there? Yeah, we've seen a lot of uh radicalization when it comes to how people are perceived. And the problem is that this leads to real consequences. While you could say, well, we're not actually speaking about it's just representation. We're actually just speaking about how American politics are with the Israeli um government and stuff like that, but that's not what actually happens in practice. when you showcase uh these stereotypes and you say the Jews or all Israelis or all Iranians or all Muslims or Arabs, what happens day-to-day is those individuals are then attacked. I mean myself as an Israeli, I have no connection to the Israeli government have faced a ton of
discrimination and anti-semitism specifically against me as an individual even though I have absolutely no connection to these uh this stuff. I don't have any connection to the American government, no connection to the Israeli government as an individual. I think something to be aware of when we are viewing online conflicts is that there are real people behind the screens that there are real people being killed in these strikes. Uh real people that are facing daily consequences. We need to be very careful about the footage that we share. Not just because uh the type of information that we share can shape policies. It can shape decision makers. But also that at the end of the day, what you're sharing when you're
sharing a missile crashing into a building, these are real people that you're talking about. Talhagen, thank you very much for joining us on Around the Latest. Thank you very much for having me. That was Tal Hagen, an information warfare analyst and media literacy educator. Going to take a short break now. Coming up, how can Israel protect its northern border from the growing Hezbollah drone threat. Welcome back. You're listening to Iran, the latest. Now, as I've mentioned, Israel is facing a growing drone threat from Hezbollah on its northern border. And following a number of soldiers being killed by these firsterson view drones
with fiber optic cables that Hezbollah is adopting, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has convened a special team with his defense minister, staffers from that ministry, and people from outside the government, including the civilian sector, to try and tackle it. Over the weekend, he told the Israeli armed forces they have an unlimited budget to find a solution. So, what is the solution? And with a shaky ceasefire in name only in Lebanon and people being killed every day, what's next for this theater of the Iran war? I'm joined now by Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Sahavi. She's an ex-Israeli Army intelligence officer who currently directs the ALMA Center, a think tank dedicated to studying and raising awareness of
security threats on Israel's northern border. Sarah, welcome to Around the Latest. Can you just start by outlining how serious is the Hezbollah drone threat for Israel and what can be done to tackle it? Look, first I want to put things in proportion for now. As long as we don't see barges of drones, swarms of drones, many of swarms of drones at the same time, it's a tactical threat mainly against IDF forces, but also against the communities because once these are crossing the border, and it happens every day that they are crossing the border, even if they target forces on the Israeli side, Israeli civilians are affected by that and sometimes are getting wounded or killed.
killed by that and it happened a few times including by the way an incident this morning of a heat on the Israeli side of the border which I don't know exactly who the casualties are but it's a tactical threat and we are working around it and is doing that in different ways they are using observe drones like those who are gathering intelligence and then sending those who are attacking they are using the drones to ambush push like to wait and see whether there is a vehicle on the road and then attack they are using the drones as baits. So and we've seen this with one difficult to watch for Israelis incident that they attack the rescue forces that came to help the soldiers that were injured and then another drone attack
the rescue forces. The video of a helicopter right where someone's being medivvaced. We spoke about it a few weeks ago on the podcast. is being medevaced and then a drone comes in and attacks them and luckily misses the helicopter otherwise the casualty count could have been much higher. A coordinated attack of many drones or swarms of drones at the same time. If this will be increased and they just started to do it more and more, it will become more of a problem. Everything I'm saying that it things that happened or things that can happen easily by using this type of weapon. And yet I am saying it's a tactical threat because eventually you know if you compare drone threat to what we faced comparing it to 2023 and the fact that had
thousands of rockets that threatened the state of Israel including precision guided missiles that could get anywhere in Israel or thousands of elite unit of that were deployed physically literally on the border. line ready to invade to the communities. Today is a different organization. The main conflict today is around the question how do we make sure that is not becoming the monster that it used to be and how do we make sure that is not positioning itself again on the other side of the border threatening our communities and civilians over there. You're sanguin about the drone threat.
Do you think the Israeli forces will figure something out? Again, it will not be 100% defense. Yeah, there is no 100% defense. Doesn't matter which weapons. And it's kind of a cat and mouse situation. You know, if we find answers to that, they will develop something else like they had done with the rockets. How surprised are you by Hezbollah adopting this sort of aggressive drone warfare? We heard during the 2024 war that Hzbollah had been crushed. Now, it seems that they've had a lot of training from the IRGC and seem to still have access to new weapons. Were you surprised? No, not at all. I was not surprised and I'll explain why. First, we've been following the process that went through around the year between the two
campaigns. And during that year, IDF tedbah rehabilitation efforts around twice a day. It was called a ceasefire but as you can understand it was not exactly a ceasefire as it is today by the way and towards the end of that year meaning towards the beginning of 2026 we all understood that the efforts of to rebuild its military power exceeded the IDF efforts to prevent it. Now again it doesn't mean that Balah came back to the situation on to the capabilities it used to have in 2023 but it does mean that they are moving forward as you said with training and with assistance of the Iranians actually deep involvement of the IRGC in this process. As for the drones it was very clear to us that will
adapt things that are happening in the war in Ukraine into what is happening in the Middle East. We wrote about it. We published a report about the drone threat in September 2024 and unfortunately this is what is happening now. How should the Israeli army combat Hezbollah when it keeps evolving like this? What's the answer? So there is what we are doing and there is what we should do and it's not necessarily the same. I think we are doing part of what we should do probably from because of restraints by international community but again I'm not sure. I'm saying probably in the past month since a ceasefire was declared there is a ceasefire in Beirut and there is a ceasefire in Tel Aiv except one Israeli attack in Beirut
but there is no ceasefire. There is fighting all the time between IDF and in South Lebanon and northern Israel and we are all affected by that. I live in northern Israel 9 kilometers from the border. There are sirens every day in northern communities. H it posed a lot of difficulties because they are not evacuated and there is no reason to evacuate them now but it's not normality. It's like sending the kids to school, sirens in the school, sirens on the way to school, on the way back. We live in an atmosphere of constant noises of war. Okay, blasts and helicopters and drones and jets and all the time everything is heard here. The activity and the IDF activity at the same time.
Why is it like this? Because as I've said, as long as Lebanon is not disarming and it refused to disarm, it is saying that it is agreed to disarm. But in reality, it is not doing that because to disarm means to confront and the Lebanese government is not interested in confronting. It is afraid of a civil war and they are not really doing that. They are collaborating local disarmament of that warehouses and these few rockets and this one tunnel. This is not disarmment. Has terrorist infrastructure in his Muslim Shiite villages everywhere in Lebanon and specifically in Sam's Lebanon. And this is what IDF is focused on now in clearing the areas in a distance of few kilometers from the
borderline from any weapons of actually fulfilling the promise of the Lebanese government from 20 years ago to disarm in South Lebanon. What we are not doing and I want us to do is to have freedom of operation againstah rehabilitation process in Beirut and in the because this is strategic. This will actually prevent from becoming stronger, threatening Lebanon, threatening Israelis. This will be a thorough change in reality. What is happening today is that has the capability to make preparation for a long and limited conflict. And I don't like that at all. I wonder why you think that if the Israeli army was able to conduct operations across the whole of Lebanon as they have in southern Lebanon, why you think that would achieve more than
Israel was able to achieve in 2024 or any of the previous rounds of conflict. To be honest, southern Lebanon in particular has been occupied previously by the Israelis and Hezbollah grew out of Vatan still exists today. What we're seeing now in southern Lebanon, the whole villages being dynamited. I think the Lebanese Ministry of Health said that more than 3,000 people have now been killed across the country. It's a lot of death and destruction. I wonder if you think there's a risk that you're just radicalizing more people and whether there is a sort of military solution to the problem of Hezbollah for Israel. If you are entering with a division of a military anywhere in the
world into a town that is used for as a base of terror meaning everywhere there are cannon shafts ofaha and weapons of everywhere between the houses inside the houses below the houses etc. You cannot start to defer one house to another because people will get killed. People cannot live in a town that you have tanks maneuvering inside. It's impossible. And that's why eventually you have to evacuate the population from these terror bases. So this is for the displaced. Let's talk about the people who were killed. Lebanon is saying that about 3,000 people were killed. But unfortunately, Lebanon is not publishing how many of them are military operatives of And according to IDF numbers, we
understand that the vast majority are military operatives of so important. We are fighting a war here against a terrorist organization and yes, military operatives of are getting killed because otherwise we will get killed. forgive me a little bit of skepticism around the sort of Israeli casualty figures. You know, we had this very extended debate in Gaza and it turned out that the numbers the casualty numbers were broadly correct coming out of Gaza and that the number of combatants were yeah not as high. Look, it's not in Lebanon it's easier than Gaza. It's not that complicated because you do see the funerals. You see funerals of many military operatives that are being carried out in different places of Lebanon. And
actually it's not that difficult because eventually if Lebanon would have published itself the this distinction between military operatives of and civilians we didn't have this kind of conversation and it's not unfortunately it's not happening. They are publishing a one number for everybody together. Third, radicalization. Let's talk about this issue. This is a very important point. Build its infrastructures to slaughter us and to occupy our communities and to take us hostages to become human shields. And I'm quoting from a plan that was published in a video in 2014. made the preparations for this plan that
I'm talking about from within those towns during the years that Israel had zero presence in Lebanon. Meaning between 2006 and 2023 after there was an agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government that will be disarmed in the areas of South Lebanon. Actually what happened in reality that became a huge monster on our borders. The basic ideology of is an ideology that is similar to the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic of Iran provided not only the weapons and the training and the money but first and foremost the ideology. And part of this ideology, other than hate to western values and democracy and women's rights and human rights, part of this ideology is also the destruction of the
state of Israel. I don't think anyone disagrees with you that Hezbollah has a horrible terror group and Lebanon and Israel would be better off without it. My question is just in terms of the level of death and destruction, do you add more supporters to Hezbollah's cause who previously didn't support Hezbollah? On the contrary, if you look Christians, Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims, you know, the patchwork of Lebanon is being united against Israel by this conflict. Look, I watched a piece of the Guardian yesterday, 16 minutes that the Guardian went in different places in Lebanon. And when he went to the Muslim Shiite base of what the reporter, the Guardian
reporter heard was a support tobah. And when he went to Christian areas in Lebanon and he asked the people who do you think is responsible for this catastrophe in Lebanon and they said and in this we agreed. That's why by the way there is a place for hope because many Israelis and many Lebanese agree upon what's the problem and what's the solution. We agree that the core of the problem is we agree upon that. Now is this only a military solution? I agree no. The answer is no. You cannot defeat an ideology. But unfortunately, the other parts of the solution are not in the hands of Israel.
The other parts of the solution are in the hands of the Lebanese government that has to do something against afraid of doing that. Just finally, the ceasefire has been extended for a second time. I think the peace talks are expected to resume in early June. How confident are you that they'll get anywhere? First, there is no ceasefire. There is a ceasefire in Beirut. We only attacked them once in the past month. And there is a ceasefire in Tel Aviv. But in Israel's north and in south Lebanon, there is no ceasefire.
There is a glass ceiling to these peace talks. And the glass ceiling is the willingness of the Lebanese government to fulfill its commitments and its commitments is to ban the activity of Lebanon. They made a promise and until today it's only a promise. They didn't do anything to fulfill their promise. The rockets that were launched to Israel in the past few months were launched from south of Leitani River from the area that the Lebanese government claim is emptied from any illegal activity. It's full of illegal activity. That's why the IDF is there. Israel has seized quite a bit of territory since October 7th. I was reading an FTP today that done some calculations that 570 km in
Lebanon and they estimate around 230 kilometers in Syria. Those are sort of buffer zones around northern Israel. Do you think that will become permanent? Okay. First, I don't know the number of kilometers, but I want to give you proportions around that. That's very important for me. If you look at the map of Syria, you will see that what Israel seized out of Syria is an extremely narrow area next to the border with Israel of between very few kilometers to less than that. I understand Syria is a big country but and in Lebanon as well.
Yeah. But it is still territory from another country and along with the territory in Gaza around 200 km, it's increases Israel's size by about 5%. You know, it's not insignificant. I'm wondering if you think that will become permanent. The idea was not to increase the Israeli territory. Okay. That's not the idea. The idea was to create a security buffer area between Israeli civilians that are living on the borders Syria, Lebanese, Gazian, whatever. and the enemy which unfortunately as we agreed the enemy is a terrorist group whether it's kamas or whoever is out there in Syria to make sure that they cannot just walk in to the communities on the borderline if on the other side of the border there is a
sovereign state that is willing to make a peace agreement with Israel not ceasefire a peace agreement with Israel that is willing to recognize the very existence of the state of Israel as a legit legitimate neighbor. We don't need those buffer zones. Those buffer zone mean a lot of money, a lot of reser that are out of their homes, not working, not with their families. If you ask Israelis in the street, we have no hate to Lebanese. We are praying for the day we can come as tourists to Beirut and have joint venture of agriculture projects with the Lebanese. And it's the same with the Syrians. Like there is an Israeli saying one day we will have humus in Damascus as tourists not as occupiers or anything as tourists.
But you can understand why the sentiment in those countries I know it's chicken and egg but Israel is currently taking over has a presence on these strips of land in other countries. It doesn't engender good relations, but it's not chicken and egg because it's not a question of territory. As I proved to you with regard to the 20 years that we were not inside Lebanon at all, it is not a question of territory. It is a question of whether the Lebanese, all of them, including the Muslim Shiites, are willing to be good neighbors of the Israelis. And unfortunately it was proven that even when we were outside of Lebanon actually with its radical ideology against Israel
became much stronger. There was no justification for having while Israel was not occupying any land and the land dispute between Israel and Lebanon during the years and you probably know that is tactical. It's it worth nothing. It's not about the land. It's not about the land between Israel and between Israel and Syria as well. It's not even with the Garnites. It's not about the land. It's the question of how sovereign is the government on the other side of the border and in both places not enough. Thank you so much Sarah for joining us on Around the Latest. Thank you. That was Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Zahari from Israel's Alma Center. And that's all for today's episode of Around the
Latest. We'll be back again tomorrow. Until then, goodbye. Iran the latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph created by David Nulls and hosted by me, Venicia Rainey, and Roland Dolphant. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Around the Latest on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. For more from our foreign correspondents on the ground, sign up for our new daily newsletter, cables, or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine, the latest. We're still on the same email address, battle lionsgraph.co.uk, or you can contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show notes. The producer is Peter Chevlin. The executive
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