I'm John Batchel with my colleague Jonathan Shanzer, Executive Director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Lebanon.

If this was a cowboy western, I would say it's way too quiet out there, compadre.

What we have now is a drone attack on two Hezbollah leadership somewhere in Lebanon.

We have the Lebanese government asserting itself in some fashion said to be about the airport.

And we have the nominal leader of Hezbollah making another bookish speech.

Where is Hezbollah going?

Well, John, what we're hearing right now is that the mechanism between the government

of Lebanon, such as it is, and the government of Israel, which is brokered by the United States,

this was set up by Morgan Ortegis, this is the deputy to Stephen Whitkoff, the chief envoy to the

president. She is the person that is running the Lebanon file.

And as I'm understanding this from both Lebanese and from Israeli colleagues, this mechanism is

working incredibly well. The Israelis identify threats. They report them to the mechanism.

The mechanism, and I don't know who the mechanism includes, but people that

are on the American desk will then convey this to the Lebanese army and to the Lebanese government.

The Lebanese have a predetermined amount of time to respond to tell the Israelis whether they are

willing to take action themselves or if they wish to stand down.

In the vast majority of times, they are standing down.

They're saying, we can't do anything about this, but please do take care of the problem.

And so that's how you see these drone attacks or different attacks that the Israelis have

carried out.

The Israelis still remain in five different checkpoints along the blue line, that temporary border between Israel and Lebanon.

And there seems to be no complaints, no real complaints about it. Yes, you will hear people griping about it in Lebanon, but they're not gaining traction.

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