This is a CBSI on the world. I'm John Bachelor with my colleagues.

That is McCutter, American Greatness, Bill Rajo, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

And we're visiting with David Dayoud of FDD.

You can find David's reporting at the Long War Journal, kept by Bill.

And we're looking at Hezbollah, which is one of the tentacles of the octopus that is a

metaphor that has become popular the brain of the octopus is Iran and so let us

connect the dots.

Hezbollah works for Tehran.

The question is, is Tehran satisfied with the way Hezbollah is putting up under the

extremely sophisticated attacks by the IDF. And what does Iran want out of

this given that it is already engaged directly with Jerusalem and is expecting a counter-strike.

So that's my question to you, David.

Is Iran ordering Hezbollah to maintain this resistance

as blinded as they might be, as limited as they might be, without of cash as they might be.

Are they, is it again that Tehran will fight to the last Lebanese?

Well, I don't know if I'd necessarily put put it as a

you know distinguish Iran from Hezbollah in such a way at the end of the day this is

Iran's chief asset in the region, as we've talked about on this show.

Everywhere Iran has gone, Hezbollah has been there first to pave the road or pave the way for it,

including Iraq, where after the US invasion in 2003, Hezbollah was there

to set the stage for the emergence of these pro-Iranian Shia militias.

So you don't want to lose the Hezbollah, you don't want to spend them. Now, is Iran satisfied with how Hezbollah is fighting? I don't know. I think they don't want to lose their chief asset and I think behind closed doors they were realistic about what would happen to Hezbollah if this fight escalated.

...