AI Summary
5 min readIn the first days of the war that followed, more than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon and over a million displaced. Then a trilateral peace deal was signed in Washington between Lebanon, Israel, and the United States. But as the Lebanese ambassador to the US put it at the signing, the agreement was meant to be “a first step on the road to restoring Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia, denounced it as a humiliating surrender of sovereignty. Sporadic fighting continued. On The Rachman Review, FT chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman spoke with the FT’s editor-in-chief Roula Khalaf and Middle East editor Andrew England about whether the deal can hold — and what it reveals about the deeper forces pulling Lebanon apart.
Why the peace deal is unlikely to work
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:35) **Deal's Fundamental Flaws** - Rudolph Halaf explains why the new trilateral peace deal is unlikely to work.
- 2 (03:18) **Hezbollah's Surprising Resilience** - Analysis of how Hezbollah has reconstituted itself despite severe Israeli blows.
- 3 (05:01) **Hezbollah as Iran's Proxy** - Andrew England details the depth of the Iran-Hezbollah relationship and its impact on the conflict.
- 4 (07:06) **Israel's Unfinished War** - Assessing Israel's military progress and the political challenge for Prime Minister Netanyahu.
- 5 (08:50) **Lebanon's Existential Crisis** - Rudolph Halaf compares this conflict to past wars and diagnoses Lebanon's inability to escape instability.
- 6 (09:33) **The Unresolvable Hezbollah Dilemma** - Explaining why there is no political solution that Lebanon's factions will accept.
- 7 (11:33) **The Sectarian Numbers Game** - A discussion of Lebanon's fundamental political problem: the refusal to conduct a census.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
The war in Iran triggered a new round of conflict between the Hizbollah militia in Lebanon and the Israeli army. More than 4,000 people have been killed and about a million displaced. Lebanon and Israel signed a peace deal in Washington at the weekend to end the fighting, but without Hizbollah’s participation, can the deal hold? Gideon puts the question to the FT's editor Roula Khalaf and Andrew England, the FT's Middle East editor. Clip: This is Beirut
Free links to read more on this topic:
Lebanon’s deal with Israel sparks backlash
How Hizbollah’s fighters ended up in court
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrive in Doha for talks over US-Iran deal
How Benjamin Netanyahu’s big moment backfired
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Presented by Gideon Rachman. Produced by Fiona Symon. Sound design is by Breen Turner.
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