I'm John Batchel with my good colleagues Bill Rajo, Senior fellow of the FD, and Edmund Fitton Brown,

former UK ambassador to Yemen, former UN official to the whole of the region, moving the goalpost as an American metaphor,

meaning the deal keeps changing and we can't satisfy anyone here.

I note, Edmund, that suddenly Tehran said part of the negotiation was the IDF had to

stop attacking Hezbollah. There are other surrogates in the region that could be mentioned,

Khatib Hezbollah in Iraq, certainly Hamas in Gaza, certainly the gangs of the West Bank, there are lots of players that Iran

could bring into this conversation. They have a lot of skills here and a lot of things to talk

about. Are they moving the goalposts? Is that part of their thinking? Well, they're certainly

agile, John. And of course, you Well, they're certainly agile, John.

And, of course, that does, you know, again, let's not exaggerate the extent to which

that's a strength.

It also reflects, you know, how limited their options are.

So, of course, they have to be agile and opportunistic.

And they are both of those things.

They want the proxies to help them. They don't absolutely

command them, although you can see in the case of the Iraqi militias that it does sometimes

feel as if they really are just divisions of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And of course, they have been very active in this

conflict. They have been attacking the U.S. as best they can. They've also been active in

suppressing domestic unrest because the Iranians don't hesitate to use these proxies also for

domestic enforcement inside Iran.

The big ones are the Houthis and Lebediz, Hiz, Hiz, Hizbullah.

In the case of the Houthis, they haven't really entered the fray this time,

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