Hello and welcome to another episode of Realpolitik.

I am your host, Firas Madad.

Today we have an exciting episode for you, I hope.

We're going to be talking about Hezbollah and Lebanon and Iran and the plans for another

war with Iran. Then we're going to move all the way across the world

to talk a little bit about Venezuela, and we will be closing with Ukraine. And the theme here is

about the limits of American power and how much can the U.S. and its ally in the Middle East

Israel actually achieve, and how much can they achieve

globally? So without too much fluff and introduction, let's start off by talking about

Hezbollah. If you listen to Israeli media, they are constantly warning that another war with

Hezbollah is going to break out.

And American envoys to Lebanon are pretty much repeating the same theme constantly,

that either Hezbollah is forced to fully disarm by the Lebanese state, which they know

couldn't do something like that because they can't physically do it, or the Israelis are going to

launch another war. Now, this is a bit misleading, shall we say, because we've reached a very strange

position where the Israelis need Hezbollah to be in Lebanon, but they don't need it to be too strong.

And let me explain why.

I wrote about it here on my own blog, Modagio Politics, and explained the following points.

Right now, because of the new configuration of Syria, because Syria is run essentially by the successors of Al-Qaeda in alliance with

Turkey, the last thing that the Israelis need is for these groups in Syria to become so strong as to

take over Lebanon and play the game that was used by the Assad regime in Syria, which is using Lebanon

as a pressure point against Israel in order to cause trouble for the Israelis and keep pressure

...