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Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Israel CAN’T BEAT Iran in Lebanon War

Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Useful Idiots, LLC

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.54.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2026

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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The Trump Administration just announced their latest achievement: it’s a ceasefire in Lebanon!

One problem: they excluded from their ceasefire talks Israel’s main target, Hezbollah, and the US is fully backing Israel’s continued assault on the group, which has included the bombing of civilian infrastructure in nearly every attack so far, killing over 3,000 people since March and displacing over 1.2 million.

What this means for the so-called ceasefire: Hezbollah must withdraw from its own territory in the south of Lebanon and Israel has no terms. Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah has rejected this deal, declining the opportunity to freely hand over their own territory to the invading Israeli army.

While corporate media has reported this simply as Hezbollah refusing peace, we’re digging deeper into the story to find out what’s actually happening in Lebanon: where is Israel attacking, what is Hezbollah’s goal, to what extent will Iran back Hezbollah, and why are the US and Israel failing to take control in Lebanon.

To do this, we speak with Michael Young, senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center and author of The Ghosts of Martyrs Square. He is based in Lebanon.

Michael has a different perspective on Hezbollah and Lebanon than most of our guests, but rather than giving you the same perspective every week, we want to feature different voices who may disagree with us, which gives us a fuller picture of the conflict. So speaking from Lebanon, Michael Young gives his take on the dilemma that Lebanon faces and what he thinks is the best way to stop Israel’s illegal invasion.

00:00 Intro

03:49 An Assault on Capitol Hill!

10:09 Fetterman celebrates Israel blinding kids (and gets a big laugh from the crowd)

10:53 Michael Young interview

14:57 The ceasefire's a JOKE

29:26 Debunking Marco Rubio



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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Useful Idiots.

0:09.4

I'm Katie Halper.

0:10.6

I'm Mary Mate.

0:11.1

Thank you so much for being here.

0:12.3

Our website is Useful Idiots Podcast.com.

0:14.6

Go there, support the show and get bonus content.

0:17.9

This week, we're going to check in on what's happening in Lebanon where the Trump

0:22.2

administration just announced their latest achievement. It's a ceasefire, everybody. They've reached

0:27.4

a ceasefire in Lebanon. Hooray. One problem. They excluded from their ceasefire talks the party

0:34.2

that Israel is fighting, which is Hezbollah, and the U.S. is fully backing Israel

0:39.0

in that assault, which has killed at least 3,000 people in Lebanon since March and displaced

0:44.8

well over 1.2 million people. The Trump administration says, yeah, we have a ceasefire, except

0:51.4

Israel, which is the invaded country, doesn't have to do anything.

0:55.3

And the ceasefire is entirely premised on Hezbollah withdrawing from the south of Lebanon from its own territory.

1:01.2

So good luck with that one.

1:02.9

We'll be checking in on that.

1:04.2

And by the way, this week in the House, Congress member Rashid Talib tried to rein in the Trump administration's complicity in Israel's assault on Lebanon.

1:13.3

And of course, that was defeated in the latest failure of a war powers vote.

1:18.5

Although a war's powers vote did actually pass on the House when it comes to Iran.

1:22.7

So that's a rare glimmer of light.

1:25.0

But we'll be focusing this week on what's happening in Lebanon,

1:28.5

and we'll hear from Beirut-based analyst Michael Young coming up very shortly.

...

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