This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague David Daoud of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

about Hezbollah's planning for the future after the decapitation and the extreme beating its leadership has taken these many months since the October 2020,

attack on Israel. David here speaks to what might be negotiated between the nominal Lebanese government

and Hezbollah, about force integration, about the Lebanese armed forces being also the Hezbollah

armed forces. Here's David to describe what might be going on in order to have a government

in Beirut make a deal with the devil. More of this tonight.

History. What I see now, again, at the further push for integration, now I would say, if anything,

they might want to push to integrate their forces into the Lebanese forces, or the broader Lebanese military apparatus akin to the 2016 PMF law in Iraq, where these militias aren't disbanded.

They are legalized as auxiliaries of the Iraqi army, but they still operate to a large degree independently,

but now they have access to funds from the Iraqi state.

So I could see, I could see Hezbollah moving in that direction, and it seems like that may be,

that may have been the quid pro quo between, uh, no-sala, the prime minister and Hezbollah to gain their uh their approval for his

government that we will open negotiations for a national defense strategy um which if i'm correct

uh will lead to some kind of integration of hesbalah's uh forces if this negotiation happens it will, and if this strategy is decided upon, it will take the form of integrating Hezbollah's armed forces or Hezbollah's forces into the apparatus of the Lebanese state while maintaining a degree of independence, again, akin to PMF law in Iraq.