Middle East Roundtable: I Blockade You, You Blockade Me

Hello and welcome to the middle east roundtable this is evan maloney at fronts.co i'm here with kyle moran staff right here at warfronts covering all things middle east and wilfred minor africa correspondent for warfronts covering anything that lands on my docket yeah as do we all thank you both for being with us it has been another busy week in the middle

East less bombing this time around a little bit more economic chaos and diplomatic turmoil but even still lots to talk about let's start with what happened last night as of the time of recording when on tuesday evening the united states appeared to indefinitely extend this ceasefire between themselves and iran hours before the initial two weeks ceasefire was

Set to expire according to the wide range of coverage prior to the expiration and the extension there had been some anticipation that the region could return to war as soon as last night that appears as if it will not happen and as of right now from what we're seeing there is no immediate plan to either end the ceasefire anytime soon or come to a broader

Deal until and unless iran can come forward with a proposal for a piece so i suppose to get our bearings as we start the week let's go to kyle first what are your thoughts on this what's your interpretation of the situation as it stands now sure so i'm sure this will be out of date by the time this goes up in an hour or two this really has been a while back

And forth and it's been happening so fast in the past week or so that it's almost like people have stopped like tuning into the specifics of if the straight is open if it's closed because it'll be this weird gray area for a period of time where one side says it's open the other says it's closed then they swap and then both sides say it's closed and then it's

Open and it's just a one heck of a mess trying to nail down what's actually going on there but yeah overall it's been an interesting week i've i've been particularly surprised that the ceasefire has been able to hold out as long as it has and been extended due to two parts the first being what we've discussed previously here that the both sides are coming at

This from such diametrically opposed positions that there is such little overlap in terms of what they actually agree on it seems that the one thing they can agree on is that it would be preferable not to be shooting at each other but beyond that there really is not a whole heck of a lot holding them together which is going to make negotiating a very steep

Battle.

And just as a reminder, even though the ceasefire is in effect, there are not negotiations happening. Iran didn't even show up last night in Islamabad. The U.S. advance was there and the U.S. delegation was there, but Iran was not in protest of the U.S. blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

To that point, Israel has also been reporting that it's, Al-Monitor has been reporting that Israel sees the chance of a U.S.-Iran deal as almost, quote, non-existent. So we will see where this takes us. I agree with Kyle. The biggest thing for me this week has just been surprise that the ceasefire has held out as long as it has.

I expected it to break down specifically because of the issues happening in Lebanon and the fact that the White House was able to get Lebanese and Israeli leaders in the same room long enough to get a 10-day ceasefire. And we will talk about the issues with that later in the episode.

But the fact that they were able to get them in the room to get a 10-day ceasefire that led to the Strait of Hormuz being opened before it was closed again, before we did that entire little chaos roundabout, I'm just surprised that, again, the ceasefire held out as long as it did.

The biggest thing for me this week are two reports that a deal between Iran and the U.S. seemed close before President Trump began posting on social media and basically negotiating through the press. From a lot of what I have seen, from a lot of the analysts that I read, there's a feeling that Trump wants a deal that he can publicly brag about.

And the Iranians just want to get this done as quickly as possible, as quietly as possible. They don't want to publicly broadcast whatever's happening. So that disconnect in communication styles, in the goals for how to broadcast this publicly, was apparently a big, big factor in why the conversation in Islamabad isn't happening as we speak.

And the second story I want to highlight is Trump's apparent reluctance to send people, to send any more troops into Iran than absolutely necessary. At the moment, as we speak, we don't have boats on the ground.

And as the three of us have discussed multiple times, the only way this war will end completely in America's favor is... if they put boots on the ground but the wall street journal has a report oh this came out a few days ago i believe that trump is very reluctant to put boots on the ground because of course there's a political cost as well but he doesn't

Want to send america's sons and daughters out there so even as we consider what possible escalations might happen you know after this point in the war with trump extending the ceasefire and iran rejecting it more or less we have to keep that in mind that trump seems extremely cautious about sending putting boots on the ground well i also think that the i

Agree with that i think the issue here being that iran is willing to take this far more seriously given that they're being bombed trump does not want this to escalate into anything even resembling all-out war which is sort of a historically unusual situation but we've sort of adapted to it being the baseline expectation in the united states where we can just

Do these campaigns abroad and have it be like nothing is actually happening back here in the states and it they have been able to do it for the most part but the with this campaign with the major exception being gas prices but still gas prices being higher doesn't equate to all-out war the way it does for iranians living under the regime right now but the

Thing being iran can obviously sense how reluctant he is to do that and i think that their game plan here is just simply wait him out because they know they know he's he's itching to get out of the fight here there's a complicating element here where it seems as if washington under trump wants to have his cake and eat it too right they want this perception

Of an easily contained war that goes away when trump wants it to they also want to go out and claim victory they want to have the whole world recognize a victory here right and if we've seen if we look back at iran's prior exchanges with israel in 2024 and 2025 right if we go back and look at the way that iran and its proxies handle conflict one of the

Really consistent elements we've seen is that iran will accept a practical defeat in the event that iran can find a way to claim victory it seems as if the us is not willing to give that up but is also not willing to accept the risk that it would take to achieve a greater measure of military victory on the ground.

So what do we make of that and that dynamic and how that is going to either complicate or possibly be relevant for negotiations as they move forward? Yeah, I agree with that. I think that Venezuela has been such a model, shall we say, an aspirational model, might be a better term.

A lot of people were pointing out that Iran was not going to be like Venezuela. And it seems as though Trump has been approaching this from the beginning that it would be. And I think that's where we're starting to see issues where you can just go in and topple the leader and then you start having all of these different changes take place.

This was not going to be the case. Iran is a very different case study. I agree. Venezuela is the perfect example of when everything can go right, it will go right. And sometimes we want to replicate the exact same conditions, the exact same scenarios that happened and you made one event successful.

But the status quo in Iran, the situation in Iran was sort of hermetically different. And the thinking among the Iranian regime was so different from the thinking within the Venezuelan regime. So we put out a video. Today is on Wednesday, the 22nd of April.

We put out a video early today morning, Eastern Time, talking about the secret purges that have been happening within the Venezuelan government, within the Venezuelan oligarchy. Delce Rodriguez basically shoring up her support, her power base with Washington's tacit blessings.

What Iran doesn't have is Adelcy Rodriguez-like figure who would quickly capitulate to Washington's demands and engineer a situation that is favorable to Washington after the strikes, after Washington has attacked. So without such a, what's the right word for this, without such a personality, without such a figure, it becomes difficult.

And for Iran, this is again a very existential war. So they want to survive more than anything else. So with this, I think this gets, go right ahead.

I think this gets to the issue of the divides in the Iranian regime, because for the divides that may be going on between the hawks and the more doves in the Trump administration, they are comparatively unified and holding hands compared to what's going on with the regime in Tehran right now.

The big divide being between the more hardline IRGC folks as well, as opposed to the more diplomatic side of the equation, Ghalibov, as well as Basarachi, Masoud Puzeshkian leading the charge there. And there have been reports that this gulf between the two sides is widening.

So when it comes to actually negotiating with these people, who's running this country? Who has final say? We still don't have a good sense as to what state Mushtaba Khamenei is in. It was confirmed that he gave a blessing to the initial ceasefire, but I haven't seen any reporting on him doing anything since then. And that was, what, two weeks ago now?

So this guy may be very much out of the equation. And it just raises the question of how do you negotiate with a country who doesn't have a clear chain of command here?

So I want to interject briefly on that because I have a video coming up, it will be out on Saturday, about the power struggles within the Iranian regime, because I find elite power struggles to be one of the most fascinating things about leadership, about diplomacy, about basically how our society is run.

So there were reports as recently as sometime this week that the Supreme Leader, Mushtaba Khamenei, had given the negotiators the green light to proceed to Islamabad. This was when we thought that negotiations would happen. And Axios reported that Khamenei had given the negotiators the green light.

So it's not that he is, he's been silent, it's, his communication is at best erratic.

There were other reports, I can't remember the specific analyst I saw this from, but it was posted on Twitter, that Ghalibaf was the main go-between for the negotiators and Mushtaba Khamenei, and at the same time there were even more reports that, and this one I have a specific person to quote, this was from Nadia Bilbasi, who's the Washington Bureau Chief

For Al-Arabia, that, and I'll quote her tweet here, info circulating that the Supreme Leader has put Ghalibaf's movement on hold until further notice, it could be hours or days.

The Iranians feel that Ghalibaf may have promised more than he should have, or that the Pakistani intermediary conveyed inaccurate information regarding the duration of the suspension and the level of uranium enrichment. So there's a lot of conflicting information coming out about just how much power the supreme leader is exercising.

Again, if Nadia's report is true that he has put Ghalibaf's movement on hold, then that will be the single most extensive show of force that he has done of late, actually since becoming supreme leader. So this puts the U.S. in a bit of a predicament, right?

Because as of now, it seems as if this ceasefire has been extended indefinitely with the hope that Iran will be able to put forward a unified peace plan. And when that happens, negotiations may pick back up. But until and unless that were to take place, it seems as if negotiations are going to be on hold. There's nothing scheduled on the U.S. side.

There's no imminent plans to travel to Islamabad. So what then is the goal here?

Because this, to me, seems like a situation that Iran, if it wanted to, could conceivably draw out or that could be legitimately paralyzed simply because Iran can't find its way forward right now, whether because of the internal divides between the hardliners and the civilian leadership or issues around Moshtabah Khmeini or whatever else, right?

So from the U.S.'s standpoint, is this indefinite pause on negotiations an acceptable situation? Is there something that needs to be done here to kind of shake things up? And if so, what does that look like? So the question of whether it's an acceptable situation goes back to what does the U.S. want to achieve with this war, right?

Trump has consistently claimed that Iran's capabilities to strike other countries within the Middle East has been significantly degraded, which multiple analysts have confirmed, that Iran is not as big a threat. And even in his Truth Social post announcing the extension to the ceasefire, he again highlighted just how weakened Iran has become.

So for Washington, the simple fact that Iran is in a weakened state and hasn't been launching missiles, hasn't been launching drones, it has been attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and that's a separate issue.

That makes it, at least in the very near term, acceptable to just... and see how iran chooses to play this out how whether iran can cobble together an acceptable deal and in the meantime a u.s carrier group is heading to sorry i'm looking for the specific name i had it and it just it just the george hw bush carrier correct the george hw bush carrier group

Yes i can't believe i forgot the name he's one of my favorite presidents so yes it's heading to the arabian sea and the us will have more options if it decides to carry out more strikes so for now it's it's an acceptable situation the iranian regime seems fractured washington seems comfortable to wait it out the blockade is extracting an economic cost on

Iran there's been reports that you know iran's economy is shrinking you know by about 10 percent there's been multiple multiple massive layoffs you know within multiple iranian companies so for washington it's it's an acceptable position they can continue to place pressure on tehran and you leave themselves the door for strikes once the george hw bush

Arrives in the arabian sea kyle what do you think yeah i agree in general that this is a better position a better holding pattern we might say for washington than it is for iran which one thing that's been overlooked in a lot of media coverage has been the continued blackout of all internet communications throughout the entire country save for a very select

Few of regime approved outlets shall we say that it has basically just blocked the economy from being able to function there was estimates that i the country is losing a huge figure of dollars every single day i can't remember off the top of my head exactly how much but it was it was significant because of this blackout just prohibiting the country from

Functioning as it otherwise normally would this is a holding pattern that is going to hurt tehran more than it will hurt washington again as i was talking about earlier the biggest impact to the united states right now has been the higher cost of gas but that hasn't been an extraordinary hike it's been substantial and people are noticing but it hasn't been

Something that will start riots in the streets or anything like that so washington might actually be taking iran's thinking here and turning it against them in terms of who can outweigh the other one because in a situation where they simply cannot agree that way that way Thank you. on basically anything.

Iran wants something that is even lighter than the original JCPOA. It's extremely unlikely Trump would accept something like that. He's not going to have launched this war just to wind up in a position that is worse than the original deal that he pulled out of to begin with.

So we'll have to see where this all goes, but I do think that it's very likely we'll see this mindset of outweighting each other play out simply because of a lack of viable alternatives.

So let's transition to the Persian Gulf then because in the Strait of Hormuz, we now have another dimension to this ceasefire or I suppose after the last couple of days, a ceasefire-ish thing where we have these two competing blockades, Iran and the United States, each attempting to exert a level of control over shipping traffic that comes into their

Vicinity.

And over the last couple of days, each of those sides have engaged in the use of force against maritime trade. So starting with the US, the United States has interdicted a couple of tankers now, including at least one that it fired upon to disable the engine.

Whereas Iran has attacked three ships using gunboats and small arms fire, two of which have then been interdicted and diverted to, I believe, Iranian ports or Iranian territorial waters. So with that in mind, as each side attempts to exert some sort of maritime control, is this situation sustainable?

Is this balance of power in the Strait of Hormuz something that can continue for as long as the ceasefire is unresolved? And can global energy markets take that?

So before I answer that question, I want to direct our attention to a story that came out in the Wall Street Journal, I believe this was over the weekend, that the UAE was considering a currency swap line with the US.

So for anyone not familiar with this, a currency swap line is a mechanism that is set up between the central banks of two countries where they can basically swap currencies, simple as it sounds. What it does is it ensures that any country can have liquidity to avoid a cash crisis.

So the UAE asking for this, I want to clarify this, the UAE hasn't formally asked for this, but the conversations are happening. And the fact that the conversations are happening, it's an indicator of how much strain this war is putting on the UAE economy.

And if the UAE... is asking of this the uae is a really really rich country i just need to emphasize that if they are asking this then you can imagine how bad the situation is among the other gulf countries not just you know because of the impact of the closure of the strait of homos but also because you know iran was hitting them with ballistic missiles

Drones their airports were lost for a period of time you all that economic impact snowballs and creates a really really untenable situation for these countries so going back to the idea of the strait of homos being in effect an area where both the u.s and iran are trying to exert their power exert their military might and basically you dominate we're looking

At a situation where if this continues any longer than it needs to and again i no one knows i don't think even saying needs to is the right way to phrase it if this continues any longer than it is then the global economy could really really suffer so it's probably in the us's best interest to stop iran from firing on ships and iran would stop firing on ships

As long as the blockade is there so again we're stuck in this quagmire that is going to be catastrophic for the global economy kyle what do you think yeah so in general i think that hormuz has reached the absolute peak of relevancy that it will ever have again this has long been the ace up tehran sleeve in terms of absolute nuclear option if we want to

Borrow a phrase where it has long maintained that it has the right even though it's not recognized amongst other countries to close this thing down if it's attacked and it's made good on that for a long time people doubted whether that would actually happen or not including in the gulf they were more optimistic shall we say that iran wouldn't go the whole

Nine yards here they did they have and the world is still spinning there have been substantial costs but already we're seeing attempts to figure out ways around this saudi arabia is particularly lucky because of its east west pipeline which continues to function at full capacity and that does raise questions about the babal mendeb strait which is another

Whole topic but in general the region has woken up to the fact that the iranians will play this card as needed and now that once they've played it once it's significantly easier to play it again So when you close the Strait of Hormuz down for the first time, this is a huge step and it really gets the world's attention.

But it's like a government shutdown here in the United States. Once this starts happening, it's almost like, oh, there they go again in terms of the geopolitics of it.

And the Gulf is working on ways to find alternatives to this, whether that be more pipelines from east to west or simply finding alternative ways of shipping this that doesn't go through the Strait. Right. Iran has played the biggest ace up its sleeve here. And even at that point, it remains closed now.

And the United States is not particularly eager to sign a peace deal. And the Gulf has never been this anti-Iran before in its entire existence. So at this point, what other options do they have? This is they've gone as maximalist as they could, and it still wasn't enough. So at this point, you almost have to wonder, do they have something else?

And if they do, I don't see what it could be. So I'd like to pivot a bit to the situation in Lebanon now, because believe it or not, everything we've been discussing is actually the better of the two seas fires happening right now. This is the optimistic case.

The more pessimistic case is what's happening in Lebanon, where I'm not entirely sure that the ceasefire negotiations, the negotiators had walked out of the negotiation room before the ceasefire began to fall apart with consistent, very frequent violations. So can you give us an update, Kyle?

I'll go to you first, and then Moford will pivot to you on where the situation in Lebanon stands today. Sure. So I may be a bit of an outlier here in thinking that this long term could be a positive outcome for the country. We can get into that in a moment.

But in general, yes, so very historic negotiations have been going on between the Lebanese government and the Israeli government. They took place last week in Washington, D.C.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam was supposed to be there himself, but could not leave the capital out of fears of Hezbollah staging large-scale protests and potentially storming government buildings. So he maintained his presence in Beirut.

So currently where this stands is Israel has drawn a roughly 8 to 10 kilometer yellow zone throughout the south of Lebanon, largely going up to the Latani River, in which it remains free to operate within. Outside of that, it's halted its large-scale bombing campaigns, particularly in areas like Beirut. But Hezbollah has continued to violate this.

This is sort of the issue. do with this whole ceasefire, though, because Hezbollah said before they even sat down that they were not going to respect the terms of whatever was negotiated here. And part of that deal includes Hezbollah not constantly attacking Israel.

So clearly you can see the hang-up here because Lebanon cannot negotiate on Hezbollah's behalf, and Hezbollah will not negotiate with Israel, point blank. They do not recognize the state and will not recognize the state under any circumstances. So thus you wind up in this unfortunate situation.

Right now, though, the broader ceasefire, as it was agreed to, in which the southern parts of Lebanon are not included in terms of recognizing Israel's ongoing ability to conduct ground operations, that has been holding relative to the fact that Hezbollah is simply not included in this and will continue to be attacking.

So as Kyle mentioned, the fact that the ceasefire itself was meant to last 10 days, it's a very historic ceasefire.

And in the long term, I completely agree it will be beneficial for Lebanon in the sense that if it's executed and a deal is reached that can lead to the disarming of Hezbollah and a situation where Israel doesn't need to consistently bomb and carry out airstrikes against against southern Lebanon, that is a win-win situation for everyone involved, except

Maybe Hezbollah and them winning is the worst case scenario for everyone, right?

So the fact that a deal was agreed in and of itself is miraculous, and I consider that a good sign. But there have been accusations on both sides, Israel accusing Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire, Hezbollah accusing Israel of violating the ceasefire.

I just got an alert from Al Jazeera a few minutes ago that Israeli forces caused extensive damage to a mosque as they carried out airstrikes across southern Lebanon on Tuesday in violation of the 10-day ceasefire, just reading verbatim what's on my screen. And of course, we know what Hezbollah is doing. So the ceasefire itself is meant to last 10 days.

That's the main point here. What happens next? What happens after the 10 days? That's the big, big picture question. Because the 10-day ceasefire was meant to allow broader negotiations between Israel and Iran. And now that those aren't just really going anywhere. it creates an untenable situation for the Lebanese people.

So let's talk then about the divergence between United States and Israeli priorities here, because there's been extensive reporting basically on the anonymous Israeli insider circuit of journalism-adjacent reporting and discussion that goes on in a lot of the spaces that we follow on how Israel really does not want a permanent end to hostilities right now.

Israel seems to believe that it has a golden opportunity in front of it to kind of end its Iran situation once and for all, at the very least to really significantly damage Iranian proxies for the long term and quite possibly to create, if not regime change, then a degree of regime damage in Iran that would take years if not decades to recover from.

So as this Hezbollah ceasefire moves towards its own deadline and the U.S. has now entered a position with Iran in the Persian Gulf that is now just kind of in a holding pattern.

Is this a situation where Israel's ability to restart hostilities in Lebanon or to kind of parlay that situation into resumption of hostilities in Iran of its own accord, is this a source of destabilization as you see it for the situation between Iran and the U.S.? So there's two tracks we need to consider. There's the political track and the military track.

On the political side, as long as hostilities continue, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won't have his corruption case proceed.

He was meant to have a court appearance a couple of days ago, at most a week or two ago, but because of the risk of him being in a singular location, in a singular well-known location in advance and the risk of him being assassinated or targeted in a strike, the court case didn't proceed.

So as long as there's hostilities, Netanyahu gets to avoid his court case and as such he is primed to make sure the hostilities continue for as long as is logically sound.

And on the military side, as you said, Evan, there is a feeling that Israel will not have a better chance to either execute regime change or weaken Tehran so much that it will take basically decades for them to recover.

And short of basically boots on the ground, I don't think israel is capable of achieving the latter goal so this is going to be a really big point of divergence between israel and the u.s because trump really wants to get this done he wants to get out this is this is a war that has gone on much longer than he initially expected it to and i think he wants it

He wants it done asap and you know the israeli establishment on the other hand has its own reasons as we have outlined for keeping the war going even longer so the biggest point of divergence is it was actually something i saw in lebanon when trump posted on truth social that israel was prohibited from attacking lebanon which according to axios caught the

Entire israeli security establishment by surprise because the terms of the ceasefire said israel could respond to an imminent ongoing or planned attack within southern lebanon so those little points of divergence will become a bigger point of contention between israel and the u.s moving forward kyle yeah as it pertains to iran and lebanon i almost

Reflexively have to insert that iran does not negotiate on lebanon's behalf and i have been it has been very painful for me seeing so many countries we discussed this briefly last week try to assert that it does so france and the uk in particular were pushing that not that not for lebanon to be included in a ceasefire but to be included in the terms of the

Iranian ceasefire negotiated by the by tehran and that's particularly malicious by iran because they know that as if the united states and israel start bombing iran again then games games over for the ceasefire with lebanon thankfully the negotiations in dc have been between specifically the lebanese and israeli government which has maintained the entire

Time in beirut that they only they are able to negotiate for themselves and they have been very furious with both france and the uk france is particularly interesting to me because they have for a very long time taken on the lebanese state was originally the french mandate so they've taken on this sort of protector status where they sort of assist lebanon

And whatnot but lebanon is done with that they israel formally rejected france from participating in the in the negotiations and lebanon didn't even protest it.

It's like, okay. They have very little love lost over that, in no small part because of the sovereignty issue. So when we're framing it in these terms, I always like to make sure we're discussing this in terms of specifically Lebanese sovereignty for that reason. But more broadly speaking, I have to wonder what this may all end up as.

Because when we're talking about the ultimate end goal, I see it as extremely unlikely that Hezbollah is simply going to lay down its arms. They've said that they will not many times, and there's very little indication that will change. We've also previously seen attempts by the Lebanese state itself to disarm the group in the area south of the Latani.

That did not go anywhere. They proclaimed that phase one was complete early this year, I believe, actually. And as you can see, that wasn't exactly their shining success. The south of the Latani is very much not disarmed. Israel is currently going through and attempting to disarm it in a very destructive way, we may add.

But until the country is essentially gridlocked, because Hezbollah is refusing to lay down its arms and is repeatedly dragging the country into war with Israel, explicitly on behalf of Tehran.

And this is where their longstanding support has started to collapse, because previously they were seen as the protector of Lebanon from Israeli aggression, as they would frame it. But over these more recent conflicts, this is not for Lebanon's behalf.

Unlike with previous issues where Israel was invading Lebanon and Hezbollah was fighting them, Israel is now invading Lebanon because Hezbollah is attacking them for defending Tehran. So the sovereignty aspect is just completely gone.

So we're going to have to see where this ends up, but the status quo of yesterday, before this conflict broke out, this will not work going forward. And I think that we have to be very focused on that, because there are some attempts at proclaiming the status quo as some good in and of itself. And I think that's just very misleading, shall we say.

So I want to push back on that idea that Lebanon and France are at odds, because yesterday Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam was in France and was actually working hand in hand with Macron across the steps of Lebanon across the steps of the Elise Palace in what Le Monde described as Salam seeking support in showing that Lebanon was not alone. in facing

Israel in these negotiations.

And I don't think it's a matter of sovereignty. I think it's a matter of allyship. So I come from Kenya and Kenya has a long history with the UK because we were a colony of the UK from 1895 to about 1963. So despite that colonial history, we still have a really close relationship with the British government.

And my reading of the situation between Lebanon and France is something similar because despite all the wrongs of colonialism, and that is definitely not up for debate, the colonial master ends up imparting its world view on the colony, and not just its world view, but allowing the colony to ride on its lapels in terms of its international standing.

So France, Israel rejecting France's role in the negotiation is completely understandable from Israel's point of view, but for Lebanon, they still have a relationship with France.

And the prime minister going to France yesterday and actually not going to the US, for me, that is more telling of the status of the relationship because after the meeting with Macron, Salam said Beirut will demand the total withdrawal of Israeli forces from its territory and the return of Lebanese prisoners and displaced people.

And Macron, for his part, said Israel must abandon its territorial ambitions in Lebanon and reiterated that Hezbollah must be disarmed by the Lebanese themselves. So France is positioning itself not as a former colonial master, but as sort of a big brother figure helping Lebanon protect its own sovereignty. That's my real situation. Sure.

So, I mean, the meeting between Salam and Macron is well expected. I'm not saying that they're never going to talk to each other again. They will. They still have a relationship. But I'm talking about the sort of historical relationship that you were describing, specifically because of the former French influence.

They may continue to have some of that, but there has been a falling out over the Iranian ceasefire situation. The French ambassador to, excuse me, the Lebanese ambassador to France met with Marine Le Pen the day after and posted a picture with her. All right.

That's a very clear one-fingered salute to the French government on this that I can assure you that doesn't just happen in. diplomatic circles. That was calculated. Now, does that cause a permanent divorce between the two of them? Probably not. But I do think that it is indicative of this.

And just as to the point about going to France, but not the U.S., Nawaf Salam was supposed to go to the U.S. He wanted to. He had to cancel it because of concerns of Hezbollah storming government buildings. So that meeting with the Israeli government in Washington is inherently going to be way more controversial than meeting with Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

So that's just sort of the situation on the ground in Beirut. But long term, I do think that the Lebanese government, of course, maintaining 100 percent claims of its sovereignty, it's not going to simply surrender land. And we have to be very mindful of that.

And that's why I'm so adamant, shall we say, that the terms that the Lebanese government itself sets should be the terms that we frame this around, if that makes sense? That makes sense. And I completely agree.

But again, I don't really see the meeting with Le Pen as a as a giant middle finger to the French government, because as we covered in the video on the on the seeming plateau of the right of the right wing populist movement in Europe, Le Pen is the leader of a party with a lot of political influence.

I see that as more the Lebanese ambassador trying to get whatever friends he can to show up Lebanon's case. Evan, I'm sorry, I cut you off just as you're going to speak. No, not at all.

I was going to move us to a discussion as well of the other Iranian proxy that I know we wanted to get to today, because much in the same way that the US Iran ceasefire situation is the less complicated, less volatile version of the Israel Lebanon ceasefire. The Hezbollah situation is the less complicated, less volatile version of the Iraqi proxy situation.

So a little bit of background here. Iran maintains a number of different proxy forces in Iraq under the broad umbrella, mostly of the PMF, the Popular Mobilization Forces. They are much less aligned than Hezbollah. They are much less strategically convergent than Hezbollah.

And the whole thing is just so deeply and geopolitically, beautifully unstable, if you will, in a way that kind of keeps us nerds up at night, really to the point that we're going to release a video about it this week. So heads up for that if you're watching our feed. But as we turn over to Iraq.

Chris Guggenich Chris Guggenich how are we seeing the situation there at this point and what are our concerns at this stage and kyle let's go to you first sure so iraq has been in a very strategically difficult position for a long time because they have what i describe as the world's most awkward love triangle going on where they're in a relationship a very

Deeply committed relationship with both the islamic republic of iran and the united states of america which is awkward and tenuous and under the best of circumstances and is way more awkward when the two of them are shooting at each other over your own soil so over the last month and a half since the war broke out iranian-backed militias in iraq have been

Using iraqi soil to conduct attacks there is a story that broke in the journal today or yesterday that over a thousand launches on saudi arabia have been launched from iraqi soil not from iran but from iraq so these people are they mean business this is not a few random rockets being fired it's pretty substantial and they have had significant both political

And military influence in the country because of the long time failure of the iraqi military to actually do its job this dates back i don't want to get too bogged down in history but this goes back briefly to the rise of isis basically the pmf was the force responsible for going in and clearing a lot of the islamic state out which earned them a lot of

Support within the country but because of this they have maintained such a large presence there and the iraqi state is really in a difficult position because they don't know how to respond to this they have greenlit the pmf to respond to attacks by the united states and israel on iraqi soil so essentially the government there is greenlighting attacks on

American forces and keep in mind the pmf is not just attacking america or israel as well they're attacking iraq itself they carried out an attack on the headquarters of the iraqi national security forces so i mean these guys are all over the place and are very clearly out for blood and i just see this as turning into an even messier version of lebanon

Because with lebanon at least you have despite the fact that you have a barely functional government for the last 10 years 10 plus years you at least have one centralized problem being hezbollah okay you deal with that in and of itself but when it comes to iraq now you have all of these different groups because the pmf is simply just a coalition of forces

It's not an actual singular entity and they disagree within themselves so some of them are like khatib hezbollah are going to be way more pro-iran than others which are pro-iran without being a hundred percent of the way there and then there are some they're even more cautious and skeptical so there's there's infighting within each other within themselves so

It's it's quite a mess kyle i want to latch on to your statement that lebanon has a barely functional government and contrasted with what is currently happening within iraq today is the 22nd of april again as of today iraqi leaders have five days to choose a prime minister and one of the worst political crisis that the that the country has seen in recent

Times so on one hand it has the issue with all these militias running rampant basically within its territory and at the same time the government is basically paralyzed and unable to choose a prime minister donald trump has his own preferred choice and he's made it known exceptionally clearly that if what's his name aliki thank you i am horrible i'm being

Horrible with names today if aliki comes into power he won't support iraq anymore so there's so many pressure points happening within iran at iraq sorry at the moment but it's you know just a bad situation all around evan and it just yeah thank you so the issue with maliki just had some context for people who may not know this guy is not just some average

Controversial figure in the in iraqi politics the reason he's so steadfastly opposed by many is this was the guy who oversaw the rise of isis in 2013 he basically gutted the iraqi military service when he was prime minister and just replaced them with along total sectarian lines with loyalists who had not the best qualification shall we say and it showed the

Iraqi military collapsed under his under his premiership in the face of the rise of isis so this guy's track record speaks for itself on that and i'm i'd be very concerned if he was to come back i have many sources who are who are just so horrified at the prospect of this guy coming back like out of anyone you could choose you choose Maliki.

There are so many alternatives in the country. They very well may end up just extending the current caretaker PM as to a second term because of this gridlock. But we're going to have to see how that plays out.

One thing I would want you to clarify for our listeners is why did the Shiite bloc choose Al-Maliki again despite his track record, despite the opposition to him? Why was he the choice? Part of that comes down to sectarian factions. Part of it comes down to he was the one who initially created the PMF in the first place.

So this comes down to his role back then can be seen as both being responsible for the rise of ISIS, but then also being responsible for the creation of the force that helped defeat it. A mixed bag for sure.

But in terms of a national sovereignty, which is the issue that I'm primarily concerned about for Iraq, because I don't doubt the PMF can hold itself together. Okay. I mean, the PMF can do business when it needs to.

But in terms of having a cohesive functioning central government in Baghdad, that's where I find Maliki to have his track record has just been so abysmal on this. Yeah. And to say that the risk of destabilization here is really quite severe would I think be to understate the case.

We haven't even gotten into the other myriad conflicts around the Middle East and the African horn that have all shown signs of going hot in various ways because of this conflict that we're already primed to do so. We could talk about Somalia and the political crisis incoming there. We're on that on war fronts very soon.

We could talk about the situation in Tigray, which is again, looking as if it's about to boil over as soon as fuel prices stabilize again. It's likely that's going to go hot as well. There's a large and long conversation we could have about the nation of Djibouti.

We can also tie back to Iraq, speak for a while about the resurgence of the Islamic State in the area, which we've covered at length previously, and the many, many other outside factors that could very easily take advantage of destabilization in Baghdad for their own aims.

It's very fortunate to this point in the conflict that the war in the Middle East has not devolved further into other kind of chaos points across the wider region, and the political crisis right now playing out in Iraq really sticks out as one of those important dominoes that we would like not to fall on that path there.

Now, speaking of the risk of renewed conflict in other parts of the Middle East. I'd like to pull in some estimates given recently by CNN. If you wanna discuss sourcing, we can do that. But this is per several experts and internal Pentagon people, supposedly interviewed by CNN, on the munitions that the US has expended thus far in this conflict.

So those included, I'm gonna read off the list here, summarized very helpfully by John Donnelly on X. So thank you, John, if you're listening. So as of now, the US has purportedly run through 50% of all of its THAAD interceptors.

Those are high altitude ballistic missile interceptors. 50% of all Patriot interceptors, which are used to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, incoming drones. 45% of its precision strike missiles, 30% of all Tomahawk missiles, and then 20% of its standard missile set and the joint air to surface standoff missiles, the JASM.

So with that rate of expenditure in the last, in essentially six weeks of conflict, right? How do we look at that? If we take these figures at face value, how do we look at that depletion of US stockpiles in context to a potential return to conflict?

Because I think depending on the way that you read this, the way that you see the situation, that could be a pretty clear indicator that the US may not have much tolerance left for continued fighting.

So I think I can pretty objectively speak for us here when I say that after this operation, we need to do some serious focusing on rebuilding these stockpiles, not just for domestic American security, but for a broader international security as well. These are defensive munitions inherently.

So in terms of being able to protect international countries, or various countries throughout the world from these incoming attacks, this is a huge vulnerability I see because it may sound okay that we're just depleted, but these things take years to build.

And the ability to actually construct them, I think that you can build like a few dozen a year at current production rates. So this is very concerning to me. I'm going to get really nerdy here. I believe it's 96 that interceptors a year and about 400 Patriot missiles before the recent expansions of the last couple of weeks. Thank you for that.

Yeah, that's very concerning to me considering how fast we burn through these things. So we're going to need Operation Epic Reload at the end of this, in my opinion. Pete Heigseth, clip that if you're listening. So, as you guys have mentioned, it is going to take time for the U.S. to be able to replenish its strategic stockpiles.

Mark Kansian, a retired U.S. Marine colonel and one of the authors of the report that CNN is linking, the original reporting was done by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that it will take anywhere from one to four years to replenish the inventories that have been used up and several years after that to expand them to where they need

To be.

I don't know what he means by expand them by where they need to be, but we can all make an educated guess, just expand the arsenal so that we're not talking about this in the future, should future wars happen. And this is something we're actually seeing the repercussions of as we speak.

A couple of weeks ago, during the worst phase of the fighting, the U.S. requisitioned, I believe it was a patriot system or a third system, I can't remember off the top of my head, from South Korea.

And while the South Korean government was obviously uncomfortable, being left defenseless, the situation in the Korean Peninsula is much, much more stable than what is happening in the Middle East, which is a completely shocking statement to say, considering the Korean Peninsula has a dictator who has access to nuclear weapons.

So we're already seeing the impact that this quick burn through, burning through of the stockpiles is having on the readiness and ability to protect allies in the Indo-Pacific. So it's a really bad situation to see.

And yes, Pete, if you're listening to this, Epic Reload will be a really, really good operation, because I can't imagine a situation where Taiwan, for example, is attacked by China, and the U.S. simply cannot respond, because it doesn't have the capacity to respond.

There were reports a couple of years back that Beijing had made 2027 the year it was going to take Taiwan. But the Pentagon came up with an assessment a couple of weeks ago, I believe a month or two at most, that Beijing wasn't going to attack Taiwan by 2027.

And Beijing might not even need to attack Taiwan by 2027, because there were reports this week that the Taiwanese opposition had gone to Beijing and had basically pledged to hand over Taiwan on a silver platter to Beijing should they come to power. but again we are we are just hoping that a situation doesn't arise that necessitates the us to use you know the

Rest of its interceptors and we know better than anyone else you cannot rely on hope when it comes to geopolitics you need to either be prepared or you know everything goes forward so yeah it's it's a bad situation around and i think this is part of the reason why president trump appears to be really hesitant to restart the war that's why you know he's

Extended the ceasefire if the war doesn't restart if you know the ceasefire leaves us you know in that sort of limbo where both sides are waiting to see what the other's going to do who's going to blink fast it will definitely this situation with the interceptors being burned through at a high cliff will definitely have contributed to the thinking within

Washington to slow down on the bombing so let me introduce another wrinkle to this whole thing in that case because if that is the bear case so to speak against the use of any further u.s munitions i think the bull case would be the transfers of more fighting material into the middle east as we speak so wilford you mentioned earlier in the episode that the

George hw bush carrier strike group is currently on its way to the middle east should arrive there in about three to five days unclear to me maybe wilford you can clarify this if that means that they're going to enter the centcom area of responsibility which would mean possibly up to another week after that or if they're going to arrive in the middle east at

That point but either way right sorry wilford you want to chime in yeah i just wanted to chime in that they will be within the arabian sea in the next three to five days i am not sure if that means they'll be within centcom's area of responsibility but the assumption is if they're heading to the arabian sea within five days max i think five days yeah five

Days max they will be within centcom's area of responsibility okay so we've seen that now starting to take shape and we've also seen i know in my work i am a diligent and relentless watcher of flight radar 24 so i'm one of the flight trackers i'm sure my fellow writers here can commiserate with we've seen a massive continual u.s air bridge of logistical and

Resupply shipments we can't say exactly what they're carrying it's a lot of c-17s occasional c-5s we can assume that they're carrying more munitions assume that they're carrying more interceptors missiles bombs what have you right and The thing that has always stuck out to me whenever we see a movement of this size, right, that is a multi-billion dollar

Expenditure just to move all of this material into the theater, let alone to actually use it, right?

And as we watch these massive air bridge movements, as we watch these thousands of U.S. sailors travel abroad, the marine expeditionary units that are already out there that remain deployed, it would be a surprise to see expenditures of this scale if there weren't some kind of return on that.

And return in this case being the use of further force at some stage.

So in that case, as the U.S. is trying to balance these purported interceptor shortages with the sunk costs of having moved so much hardware to the Middle East, and especially to have replenished it now in advance of a second wave of hypothetical hostilities, which of those do you believe is going to win out in the end?

I will hesitate to say that the return on investment is only through a strike or through the expenditure of more munitions or through extended hostilities. I think perceived pressure, the perception from Iran that, yes, Washington has shown us they're capable of striking us and not just striking but exacting a really, really heavy cost.

That perception that perception that Washington is bringing more arms and is ready to go again, if it can push the Iranians to the table faster and get a deal that Washington can accept, that will be a return on investment.

That will be significant enough that it will justify not just the spend, but you're putting all these military officials, military officers, the soldiers in harm's way. Because every time these munitions are taken to the Middle East, there are people behind it, there are people who will need to operate it.

We saw it when the two airmen were downed in Iran and Washington had to execute one of the most brilliant, absolutely brilliant rescue missions to save their lives. So I think we have to be cautious when talking about return on investment because a military strike isn't the only way to do it. That's my take.

I also highly suspect a significant, maybe not necessarily a majority, I'm not going to speculate too much on that, but a significant portion of what's being shipped over there is also. defensive resupplies.

Keep in mind, in the initial rounds of Operation Epic Fury, based on how much Iran was launching, the original assessments was that Dubai and Doha were both going to run dry on interceptors within the first week or two. The United States was able to dramatically reduce Iranian launches to make it so that did not happen.

But just given how much the Iranians were launching, this was a big concern. So I think a lot of that is going to be defensive in nature. There probably is also a lot of offensive munitions in case this heats up again. Right now, I'm just caught in a balance between what benefits both sides more.

First, waiting the other side out, or second, the fact that they can't agree on anything other than to wait each other out causing this to kick off again. So that's sort of the test as to what's going to be next in this campaign. So let's think about a worst case scenario then.

Just to invent a hypothetical, let's say that we get to the end of this week, the back and forth in the Strait of Hormuz continues to pick up. Perhaps Iraq starts to devolve. Perhaps Lebanon's situation begins to metastasize into something more, and we get to return to full-scale hostilities in and around Iran.

In that case, and I would love to get a kind of a prognostication from each of you. In that case, looking at the U.S. and looking at Israel, would we expect those two nations to approach that renewed conflict with the intent to work toward further off-ramps?

Or are we now in a situation where if conflict renews, possibly by virtue of Israel's arguments to this end, partially, or perhaps by virtue of the United States' strategic evaluation, would we be moving into something more of a final showdown, right?

Where it is much more of a no holds barred, somebody is, you know, some regime is not walking out of this situation, right? Do we anticipate that or do we anticipate that a second round of hostilities would be targeted at achieving a second round of drawdown?

I think if a worst-case scenario does erupt, if we're looking at a situation where, and pardon my French, shit hits the fan, then the Iranian regime will not survive. Trump has given them enough time to make a deal.

And this is something I learned from watching how he negotiated the Venezuela. crisis he will give you enough time to make a deal and if you don't take it regardless of the cost he will do what he thinks must be done and considering the fact that israel will be pushing for complete ends to whatever's happening in iran there will be a lot of pressure on trump

Both from the israeli government and its allies within washington like lindsey graham to get this done once and for all so that the world can completely forget about you know the iranian the iranian risk so i think if you know this escalates we're looking at the final weeks and months of the regime in iran my i am i'm always cautious in predicting the future

To a fault i try to i hold myself back on that because i worry about these things blowing up in my face five seconds after i say it so i'm gonna be cautious on this as well but that if you put gun to my head i have to predict something here i don't see how this air campaign can knock out the regime one of the main reasons that i was so opposed to the

Potential strikes on iranian energy infrastructure were twofold first it would turn the iranian population even for further away from the objectives trying to be established against the regime here it's a very self-inflicted wounds for the us as well as just causing chaos for the people there but the regime there does not care about the conditions of

Iranians they have made this pretty clear through the crackdowns they are willing to do whatever it takes to survive and if that means iranians have to sit around in the dark that's a price that's a price that tehran is willing for them to pay in order to continue their existence so i don't know at this point whether the i haven't seen anything is what i'll

Say to suggest that the continued air campaign could topple this regime if we are talking about regime change what i do think is more of a long-term problem is this government was barely functioning before this war even kicked off i mean the currency has literally hit zero on the dollar so you if you look up the conversion rate you have to go so far out it's

Like seven decimal points of zero before you even hit any other number at this point to the dollar the economy is just complete has been shut down for a month and a half at this point and they've neglected basic government responsibilities like water for a long time at this point so that's another ongoing issue i have to imagine that Once the regime is back

To day-to-day business, things are going to start getting much more ugly for them in terms of just being able to carry out basic procedures.

So they may have been able to insulate themselves from an air campaign, but in terms of functioning as the government once again for day-to-day operations, I am more skeptical as to that long-term. Yeah, I would just go in at a plus one to that as well. I do agree that the limitations of a U.S. air campaign have now been pretty clearly exposed.

There was, I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago, there was a world here in which the U.S. kind of emphasized a bit more kind of a popular revolution in Iran, emphasized a Kurdish defensive in the north, possibly a Balaq insurgents in the south, all kinds of things that could have kind of tipped the scales, but it seems as if that window has

Passed, and as if the strategic decision-making actually didn't funnel in those directions at all in practice.

The U.S. would need to commit a level of troops and commit to a level of risk that it does not seem willing to accept in order to topple the regime outright. Israel doesn't have the capacity to place ground troops.

It's trying to hold down Gaza and also watch over Lebanon and also deal with anything coming out of Iraq if that were to happen, and also keep control of parts of Syria, and so on and so forth. It does not seem as if Israel is going to take that on, and the Gulf states, of course, don't have the capacity.

To your point, Kyle, about kind of this resumption, this return to normal, that, I think, is the big point of vulnerability for Iran, where if the Middle East can return to a status quo that does not involve the regular threats of closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the regular laying of mines in the Persian Gulf, the regular bombardment of Gulf infrastructure,

If there is a way forward that avoids those things, the Middle East is very interested in moving on toward a post-Iran situation more broadly.

We've discussed on war fronts several times now that we have kind of seen these factions emerging that have nothing to do with Iran, right? We have Israel, the Emirates, Ethiopia, Morocco kind of on one side.

We have Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, kind of on the other in this metastasizing, much larger growing back and forth of geostrategic competition, proxy conflicts, all kinds of things, where the one thing that all of those sides seem to agree on is that Iran is not a part of their vision for the Middle East future in any way, shape, or form.

So, it is... curious to me that we could be moving toward a situation where this kind of just fizzles out and the aftermath of that fizzling out leads to a much larger economic effort, geopolitical, diplomatic effort to ice Iran out of its remaining place in the global geostrategic ecosystem. So just some thoughts on that to tie this over into next week.

Speaking of, because we're coming up on time here, I want to ask before we conclude, looking ahead to the coming week, where are both of you focused right now? What kind of things are you watching to develop in the next seven days before we come back? So I'll jump in here for myself.

Lebanon being primary subject, we'll probably have an episode later this week on this, given that negotiations are resuming tomorrow in D.C. we'll have to see what the outcome of that is. If there's something substantial, we'll obviously do something. If not, we may do a more general update.

We haven't done a dedicated Lebanon episode in a little while here, so either way, we'll probably have something on it. But just the historic nature of these talks, as well as even the prospect of Lebanon being able to move past this Hezbollah situation that has just gridlocked the country.

And for viewers who, or listeners who may not track this issue as closely because it doesn't get as much coverage, when I talk about previous Lebanese governments being barely functional, I have to give resounding applause to the duo of Nawaf Salam and Joseph Aoun in Beirut currently, who have been exceptionally and uncharacteristically given previous

Lebanese political standards, willing to tackle the issues of the day here, both in terms of defending Lebanese sovereignty, as well as tackling the issues of recognizing that at this point, Hezbollah is not willing to function within, to coexist within the same state.

It will drag the country repeatedly into war on Tehran's behalf. For me, what I am watching this week is whether the extended ceasefire by President Trump will actually last, or how long it will take to devolve. I'm also watching the infighting happening within the Iranian regime, and what the outcome will be in Iraq's leadership struggles.

Because however all these stories develop, I think there's a very interesting through line connecting them. And I just want to see what the world will look like this time next week, when we come back to record the podcast. Well, if nothing else, the long arc of history bends toward us getting an answer to that.

But we're going to have to wait about seven days. Case 1st. So- With that. this has been the Middle East Roundtable with Wilfred, with Kyle, and with myself, Evan of Fronts.co. If you are a subscriber to Fronts, thank you very much for your support. We truly appreciate it.

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