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. . . . . . Hello and welcome to Coffey House Shots, The Spectators Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Oscar Edinson and I'm joined today by James Heel and Michael Stevens, Senior Fellow at RUSI. So events have moved on fast since Labour

conference with the mounting prospect of all-out war in the Middle East. This

comes after reports that Israel are preparing a ground invasion of Lebanon to push back the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Michael, could you perhaps to start with take us through the situation at the moment?

Well, we're in the middle of what is quite a dramatic escalation.

That has been bubbling for some time and you could argue that since the Hamas attacks on Israel

of October 7th, 2023, we were always going to come to this point. The fact that it's taken a year has, in some ways, surprised people who thought that actually this might happen a lot earlier, perhaps in April or even in March. But we're here. The Israelis have decided that they cannot

tolerate the presence of an organization firing rockets daily into their civilian towns and cities.

70,000 Israelis are absent from. into their

military town's and cities.

Just next to the Lebanon border.

And Israel has said that their military mission is now to return those residents

to their homes, and they will not accept a situation in

which they are not allowed to return. As a result they have taken it upon themselves

to launch some very surprising operations blowing up pages, walkie talkies of Hezbollah commanders and

...