I'm John Baxter with my colleague, the executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy is Jonathan Shanzer. The headline, IDF withdraws from Lebanon border villages, keeps buffer zone. Lebanese army deployed. The buffer zone, according to this report, consists of five

strategic outposts inside southern Lebanon. Jonathan, this is once again a mystery to me.

How is this different from before? Well, John, it's a little different only because his

bala is in bad shape, but it is trying to reconstitute.

It is trying to redeploy.

What is truly remarkable to me is that the U.S. negotiating team, Stephen Whitkoff and Morgan

Ortegous, have been pushing for Israel to withdraw. Today, February 18th, is the day

that the ceasefire agreement is actually slated to end. And so that's why we have been hearing

from the U.S. side and from Hezboala, maybe a mixed bag out of the Lebanese government,

as it were, but they're all calling for Israel to move out. The problem is, is that the Lebanese

armed forces, the laugh, are really not up to the task of taking over southern Lebanon. They are

unable to gain control in any meaningful military way.

And so this is putting the region in a very interesting state of flux. I would say a very

dangerous state of flux because Hisbalah still maintains a significant arsenal.

From what I heard in Israel from a few weeks ago when I was there, John, roughly two-thirds of Hisbalah's arsenal was destroyed,

along with the vast majority of its top leaders. The top leaders have been replaced by

mid-level operatives who are now assuming these new roles and they are trained to fight.

This is exactly what they are planning to do.

That one third arsenal that is left, one might say, okay, well, that's good.

It's much smaller than it was.

Here's the problem, John.

It was that arsenal was at about 150,000 projectiles, drones, rockets,

...