I'm John Bats for Bill Raggio, my colleague and co-host and friend,

senior fellow, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Lebanon, you Rajo, my colleague and co-host and friend, senior fellow, Foundation for the

Defense of Democracies. Lebanon, you will note that one of the demands by the Iranian offer of

the Straits of Hormuz can be reopened was to demand that the war in Lebanon cease and the Israeli

defense forces withdraw from contact with Hezbollah.

In other words, Hezbollah wins. However, since that demand, two things have happened.

One, importantly, the American president has rejected the whole of the offer, not just the Hezbollah part.

And two, the Speaker of the Lebanese government, the Speaker of the Lebanese Assembly,

says there will be no talks between Israel and Lebanon and U.S. until the war in Lebanon

ends. David Deuter of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins us.

David, both sides are pointing and making demands about Hezbollah.

Where is the war right now?

And your comment on Iran demanding the war end.

Good evening to you.

Good evening, John.

Well, let's start at the end.

Iran has effectively linked the fate of Hezbollah to its own ceasefire with the United States. This is something that the United States seems to have accepted. We're trying to, I suppose, outmaneuver the Iranians. Rather, you know, turning the Iranian intention here is that

the ceasefire, when our ceasefire went into effect with them, they said, they turned to the United

States and said, if you want the ceasefire with Iran to continue, we have to have a concurrent one in Lebanon,

not because the Iranians care about Lebanon, because they want to save Hezbollah.

We've since tried to outmaneuver them by trying to take

control of this process, or at least to take control of overseeing this process of negotiations

...