Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is John Ross. I'm the digital editor of Current Affairs Magazine.

We're joined today by Lebanese American journalist Rania Kallak, host of the Dispatch's podcast from Breakthrough News.

Rania joins us from Beirut amid ongoing Israeli attacks and repeated ceasefire violations in Lebanon.

She's been doing some of the most important reporting and analysis on the

region, and we're very grateful to have her with us today. Rania, thank you so much for joining us.

It's great to be on with you, John, and thank you for the lovely introduction.

Okay, so last time you spoke with current affairs, you warned that Israel was openly threatening

to turn southern Lebanon

into the next Gaza. And since then, we've seen continued Israeli strikes during what's being

called a ceasefire, in addition to mass displacement, entire villages being blown up, journalists

and medics being targeted, as well as a so-called yellow line or buffer zone, where people may

just never be allowed to return.

And since you're based in Lebanon, I was hoping that you could just walk us through what the so-called

ceasefire has actually looked like on the ground. Yeah. So this ceasefire has been in effect since

April 17th, I believe. And this was a ceasefire that was imposed unilaterally

by Donald Trump a week after the ceasefire went into effect between the Iranians and the Americans.

And I just really quickly want to point out that the, that initial Iranian-American ceasefire

was supposed to include Lebanon. That's what the Iranians were under the impression of.

That's what the Pakistanis thought would be the case. That's apparently what the Americans had

agreed to. But as soon as that ceasefire went into effect, it was the next day that Israel

dropped 160 bombs on Lebanon in 10 minutes,

killing almost 400 people, if not more, in 10 minutes,

...