I'm John Batchel with my colleagues, David Dalyuda, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy,

commenting on the endless barrage of missiles and drones fired by Hisbalah against Israel,

and former ambassadors from Pakistan to the United States, Hussein Akani,

about weeks left in the Biden administration,

what is to be done, what can be anticipated, what subjects will continue under the Trump

administration. David, I start with you because I remember sometime in the not too distant past

before the October 7th attack in Israel, there was talk about major resources offshore, Lebanon,

Cyprus, Israel, sharing those resources, and Hezbollah was a major factor in that sharing

document. There were threats, there were promises. I'm only mentioning this because it's the Marxist in me.

Follow the money.

Does any of that promise and negotiation that can stop the rocket barrage

and integrate anyone in Beirut into prosperity again?

No.

So the deal that was, you're referring to the maritime border deal from 2022, that finally

demarcated the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon.

The land border remains to be demarcated.

There's no official border between the two countries.

And the reason for that was that

there is this block eight and block nine offshore economic zone blocks where there were hydrocarbon

deposits supposedly. And the Lebanese wanted to exploit the portion that they claimed lay in

their in their portion of the territory. And unfortunately for

the Lebanese, even after the demarcation and exploration, it turns out there were not economically

...