Latest / FDD Morning Brief / Washington's week with Beirut and Beijing | feat. David Daoud and Craig Singleton

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Washington's week with Beirut and Beijing | feat. David Daoud and Craig Singleton · FDD Morning Brief

• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, good morning folks.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Friday, May 15th, the Multifront War in the Middle East is now 951 days old.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host Jonathan Chanzer, welcome back.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yet again, to the FTD Morning Brief.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, it's been a busy two days of news.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're gonna get right down to it.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: With our headlines today, so buckle up.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here we go.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Headline one, we've got another floatilla on the way to Israel.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: We need that like a hole in the head.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Over 50 boats carrying hundreds of activists set sail from Turkey yesterday, the goal remains to break Israel's blockade of Gaza, which the Float Hill of people described in a recent social media post as quote, the longest running siege in modern history and quote.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not sure about that, but okay, these rallies are set once again to intercept the ships as they now have on multiple other occasions, but keep an eye out for the Turkish needy this time.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: reports out of Israel suggests that the Turks may try to challenge the Israeli Navy in a future flotilla.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's unclear if this is the one they're referring to for that showdown.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I for when I'm not thrilled about the prospect of the Turks and Israelis clashing on the high seas.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: headline two a his beloved drone attacked and uh wounded for Israeli civilians in northern Israel apparently the idea didn't detect the incoming drone which means the sirens didn't ring out in the area the drone had a parking lot resulting in four casualties at least one victim is in critical condition
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: The uptick of these drone attacks point to eight new trend, FPV drones, first person view drones.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: They operate on fiber optics, which means they have no electromagnetic signature making them hard to detect or to jam.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're super cheap running from a few hundred bucks to a few thousand.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they're relatively new after literally exploding onto the scene in Ukraine and Russia just two years ago, or less than that actually.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is now his boss preferred weapon folks, Israel's developing interceptor drones, but domestic production lines rely on Chinese components, we'll get to that a little bit.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's a major supply chain and security concern.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So stay tuned for more on this.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am certain that we're going to be talking about this more and more on this program.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: headline three is really prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met the Netanyahu's office said on Wednesday Netanyahu secretly visited the UAE during the war with Iran to meet emirati crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed however Abu Jabi subsequently released its own statement denying that any such visit took place Iranian foreign minister Abbas Iraq she then appeared to weigh in warning on social media that colluding with Israel is quote unforgivable and quote
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't name the UAE, but it's hard to believe that Abu Dhabi isn't feeling at least a little bit of heat out of that.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Headline four, Fata, the Palestinian Authority's dominant faction, is on day two of a three-day circus slash conference to elect members of the Central Committee in Revolutionary Council, which is essentially the party's parliament.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the first time in a decade that's the elections have taken place.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, democracy at work.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: In his opening remarks, Palestinian
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so says the 90-year-old Altacocker serving the 21st year of a four-year presidential term.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: No corruption there.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, Abbas also blasted Israel for withholding tax revenues from Ramallah revenue that Jerusalem is withholding, because the PA continues to pay welfare to terrorists pay per sleigh, it's welfare for psychos.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that's the headlines.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It has been a busy week for Washington diplomacy.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: the Trump Xi Jinping summit, the Israel Lebanon talks in Washington, a lot of moving parts and no fridge of a hot takes out there on social media, but that's not what we need, right?
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: We need serious analysis to help us understand what's happening on both of these sensitive files.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's why we're doing a sit rep style episode today.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why I'm talking it probably one and a half speed, which some of you are probably used to.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to be doing this sit rap style episode with FDD experts Craig Singleton and David that would Craig is a former U.S. diplomat who spent years working the China Portfolio and David is a Lebanese born Lebanese analyst who actually fought against his ballad in Lebanon, Arabic speaker.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get their take both of their takes on what Washington was really after this week and whether we got there.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's get into it.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's welcome them both onto the show.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the FKD Morning Brief Craig Singleton and David Dowd.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Good morning, guys.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alright, Craig, we're going to start with you.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: This summit between Trump and Xi Jinping was rescheduled.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: When was it supposed to originally take place and why was it changed?
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was changed in short because of Iran war optics, you know, the summit was supposed to project this idea of control and stability between the great powers and that became a lot harder, of course, once the Middle East crisis started to dominate the agenda, so a Trump cheese summit.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: was already pretty complicated, I think, because both sides want commercial deliverables, but they also want to preserve the leverage that they have in the relationship.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the Ron Moore right makes this more complicated.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It makes it more delicate.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, this summit wasn't about things like soybeans and tariffs and Boeing planes.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was about energy and the street of Formus and, of course, Chinese purchases of Iranian oil and
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, Beijing would be willing to help or hinder Trump's pressure campaign on Tehran.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think the delay isn't just the logistics.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's sort of just reflected the fact that this strategic environment changed around the summit.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trump didn't want the meeting to become overwhelmed by Iran, and Chinese League or Xi Jinping didn't want to look like he was sort of doing Washington's bidding by trying to solve what he believes is a U.S. driven crisis.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think both leaders needed the summit track to survive because they want stability in the relationship, but neither really wanted Iran to define it.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so let me maybe drill down just a little bit because I want to ask what Trump came into looking for in this summit and what Xi Jinping wants to, what they wanted to accomplish.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I want to get kind of big picture here, is it, did Trump start this war with Iran?
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, there are all these people out there saying that this was something that Israel talked into where the Saudis or the Emirates did.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: There are people out there that were saying that Trump was essentially trying to establish new spheres of influence, right?
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: We took down Venezuela and then we were moving in on Iran and the idea was to say, we've got the Western Hemisphere and we've got the Middle East and now you're moved Xi Jinping.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Was that what was going on and then Xi Jinping was just, hey, you know, Taiwan's ours?
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, was that the messaging that, hey, we're just planting flags all across the US and carving up the globe or was there something more nuanced than that?
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm not convinced there was a whole lot of 4G chests going on here, but I think when we think about the summit itself.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the goals of this meeting, this great power meeting, were very, very modest.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's just because the relationship can only sustain very modest outcomes right now.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there was never going to be, I think, big grand bargain.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trump wanted this summit to deliver small wins that he can market at home.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wanted agricultural soybean purchases.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wanted Boeing jet orders.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wanted energy-related commitments.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wants to talk about investment.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: He just wants to show that his personal brand of diplomacy produces deals.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he can do that without triggering apply chain disruption or of
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: but Xi Jinping he wants something very different from this dynamic.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wants stability without surrendering.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wants terror of predictability from the United States.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wants recognition that he's Trump's equal and he wants enough breathing room globally for China to absorb pressure and to slow U.S. with the risking or you know attempts by the U.S. to reindustrialize.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wants to keep foreign firms trapped in China.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think as they were leading into this summit, you had this sort of mix of what was going on the Middle East as a potential distraction, but then the goal for both men to get something that they wanted.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think at the end of the day, they were both able to get something that they wanted without moving on the issues that matter the most, which include rare earths or ships,
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so I mean, really, would you think when you break this down?
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, was this a success for either guy did they actually get something that was tangible for them?
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like I think Trump was able to secure these commercial commitments that he can champion at home.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Xi Jinping, he got what he wanted, which is breathing room, right?
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wants a steady relationship to preserve China's leverage.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so this summit was aimed at projecting stability, but it really was about stalemate.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: both sides made some deals at the margins, but neither leader is prepared to compromise on the issues that define the rivalry.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I suspect that they both are able to claim some wins, but the big thorny issues like technology and supply chains in rare earths, that stuff's all unresolved and I don't think that
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: The challenge now, of course, is that while the summit was able to manage this moment in time, the underlying contest just returns to the same pressure points once she is back in the United States.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, you have not mentioned AI.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have not mentioned TSMC.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: maybe just get into a little bit of that because that's the big stuff here, right?
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the big, those are the big things that I'm kind of shocked that you have mentioned them yet.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's explain what's going on here with this wider technological competition that's going on here because that is the big big story and it's not the Middle East and it's not the summit and it's not soybeans, right?
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not, I mean, I guess rare earths are part of this, but it's really not the big story here.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: chips and AI.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's where we sort of enter into what's the most important part of the summit wasn't actually discussed there, right?
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: We talk about the US China relationship about trade primarily.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: This month and the last two months it's been about Tehran primarily, but the stuff that's the real drivers of the structural rivalry are Taiwan and technology.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we always use these T-literations.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: It makes it really easy to remember them all.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Technology will be the defining feature of the U.S.-China relationship.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whoever controls these key drivers, artificial intelligence and quantum and drones and biotech who ever controls those key cutting emerging edge technologies will control the drivers of the next industrial revolution.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: China has its vision, we have ours, and they are in total conflict with one another.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, whoever, I think those sort of facets of that technology race, of course, are going to be key for U.S. policymakers, this administration and the question is whether we would sacrifice national security, like our export controls or our key technology inputs to China for trade deal.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the president didn't discuss export controls or technology, frankly, at all, on the trip.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think for a lot of
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Taiwan, of course, is the likely flash point.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to go to war with China over like semiconductors or chips.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to go over, go potentially stumble into a war over Taiwan.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And here, the Chinese made clear that if the U.S. mismanages the Taiwan relationship, it could lead to conflict.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was a pretty direct quote from Xi Jinping.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time President Trump said that he just heard him out, he didn't make any commitments either way, there were no changes to U.S. Taiwan policy, so I guess that's where we get back into this structured stalemate between the two sides.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, we want to reduce our reliance on China as much as we can.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: China wants to retain its dependence, our reliance on them so they can control our decision-making and they want to do that because of Taiwan and they want to do that because of technology and how this is going to play out will be the defining feature of the U.S.-China relationship for the next decade.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, here's the part where I'm going to ask a sensitive question that stares us back into the Middle East because look, what you've just described is super high-stake stuff because when we talk about AI, this is, I mean, this is technology is going to shake the future of humanity, right?
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: We are on the precipice of something enormous right now with AI.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not something we talk about a lot on this program.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have a feeling it's going to be something that we have to talk about more and more because it's the elephant in the room.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: munitions on Iran, right?
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it was, I think, an important thing to do, right?
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: It, it, it, it needed to be done from the perspective of Middle East security.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: It needed to be done from the perspective of maybe even, you know, energy security.
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: However, it didn't work out exactly the way we wanted.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're sort of at a stalemate.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: You just talked about a stalemate with Xi Jinping or obviously a little bit of a stalemate over the straight or foremost.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: did the Iran war and the munitions that we dropped and the reduction of our stock pile and the deployment of aircraft where they're now less ready because they've got more miles in the air.
• 13:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You got wings that are starting to fall off some of these up 35s and maybe other aircraft.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So did this war put Trump in a better or worse possession?
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I know that it's nuanced.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It always will be.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this idea that we've got less in the tank to be able to use for a possible Taiwan straight crisis in another, let's say, one year or two years.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Deceasing ping is he leveraging that?
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that the subtext?
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that the context for this conversation?
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where they're like, hey, you just made a mistake.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: In this big chessboard Trump, you've moved too fast, too quickly, you put yourself in a weaker position and now we're getting ready to do something that you're not ready to defend.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's too soon to tell on some of these things.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the best way to put it is that the Iran war creates a strategic bandwidth problem.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Middle East doesn't replace the Indo-Pacific as the main theater of US China competition.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It makes competing in the Indo-Pacific harder though, right?
• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Every crisis in the Middle East consumes US attention and munitions, air and naval capacity, diplomatic bandwidth and political focus and Beijing understands that.
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And China is going to try to turn U.S. distraction into diplomatic opportunity.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to tell Asian partners that Washington creates in stability while Beijing offers continuity.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: That narrative is self-serving, but it can gain traction when energy prices are very high, shipping gets riskier and our attention in the United States looks really stretched.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we have to remember that China is also not immune here, a prolonged Iran crisis raises energy and shipping and insurance costs for China, Beijing wants Hormuz open and energy slowing that's clear.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It wants enough instability to distract and drain Washington, but not so much instability that China absorbs serious economic pain.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think while Beijing is comfortable exploiting instability, it is much less comfortable absorbing the costs
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And those are going to beat the things that were in me looking in the China space for the next few months.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: This hopefully this war in the Middle East comes to a close.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I mean, I can't help but to draw some parallels to the Cold War, you know, where you've got two superpowers that they want stability, while they move and inch towards some of their ultimate strategic goals.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they have to manage minor flash points, minor crises, and sometimes they look bigger, then they actually are in the wider scheme of things.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for that.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to come back to you in just a few minutes, but I want to turn things over to David that would because right now we've got something else that's pretty enormous from a regional perspective that's happening and I need you to weigh in on it because right now we've got this third summit between Lebanon and Israel being hosted by the United States.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is pretty enormous when you think about it, right, because you've got the potential for the demarcation of an international border, which is not happened right since 1948 when the first Arab is really war broke out, you got the potential for some kind of end of hostilities agreement because the two are finally talking and they have they have common ground.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then ultimately, we could, if things move in the right direction, you could even see normalization between these two countries, this is huge as far as I'm concerned from a regional perspective.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not about the future of AI like China's or like Craig's file in China, but it's pretty big from a regional perspective.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think this is actually some pretty big exciting stuff.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if you would David, maybe just tell us, what did the first two summits accomplished?
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because we've had a couple now.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: the last, I don't know, month or two.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what do we expect this one to accomplish?
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that the stage force?
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the first two accomplished setting the stage for the third one and kind of laying out the respective positions of the government, now of the respective governments of Jerusalem and of Beirut.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I think there is some excitement to be had for the fact that Lebanese are talking to Israelis directly for the first time since 1983.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, I think when we look at the respective positions, it kind of should temper expectations.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: There Jerusalem is coming to this and saying, we want normalism.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: We want peace in the way that most people mean peace.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, normalization, diplomatic relations.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ambassador Yechia Lighter said this after the first meeting, we want to see tourists and we want to see businessmen.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: We want to see people going to each other's country and business suits and bathing suits.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's going to...
• 17:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That presupposes that's going to require the disarmament of Hezbollah.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And how else could you imagine is Rayleigh's walking around in Beirut safely, while Hezbollah remains armed, while Hezbollah remains any kind of appotent force in Lebanon?
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it also presupposes Lebanon's ability to control its territory, because even if you take Hezbollah out of the equation,
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a poorest border in a country that is predominated by lawlessness as Lebanon has been for decades, that opens up the territory to the entry of all types of hostile actors who could do harm to Israelis.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're not talking about the UAE here.
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's an 11 on element to be had here, but with the Lebanese are saying they're coming to the table for very different reasons it would seem.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: as you noted, demarcation of the border, mutual cessation of hostilities, the end of Israel's presence and military operations in Lebanon.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what the Lebanese are saying is, we're not doing normalization now.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they say, peace, they distinguish it from normalization.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: They normalization to them is what we would call peace.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: What they're looking for seems closer to a quiet.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the question is whether that quiet will be permanent and you know me, John.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm all four kind of going for what can we achieve as minimal as it is.
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'd be happy with mutual quiet between Israel and Lebanon for the next two decades, setting the stage for peace later on.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is you need to disarm hisbilibit because you can't even have quiet in the meantime without the disarmament of a husband.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a permanent cessation of hostilities and let
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: companies get everything they want out of this.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then you have Hezbollah continuing to grow in the background, then what we're back to is 2006 to 2023.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have a deceptive quiet that's setting the stage for the next conflict.
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, first, let me just note that the idea of Israelis and bathing suits in Bay Root or in Lebanon.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Kind of cracks me up.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just envisioning Israelis in their traditional speedos, which is probably more of a terrorizing impact on
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Any war that's been fought, the invasion of Israelis of hospitals in Lebanon just scares me.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But okay, I want to ask you.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we know that the idea of his bullets still remaining in power is a real problem, right?
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we also know that the Lebanese armed forces, the Lebanese government are faceless.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: They don't have the capability and they need it and no one wants to invest in it right now because nobody thinks that it's something that can happen.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: What can the Lebanese do here right now against his bowler without that, without the military?
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I guess my question is, can they mount a campaign like we had something called the March 14 Coalition, back in what 2005, where it was the Sunnis and the Maranites, working together with the moderate Arab states.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: and the Europeans and the United States, and there was this sense that we were putting mounting pressure on the Iranians, on the Assad regime.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, there's no Assad regime, there's still Iran.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Iran's weaker.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It feels like this is the moment for kind of a coalition like this.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: What would that do?
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you envision something like that with the current map that we have that we're playing with?
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think two two parts to this question, the first part is capabilities, you know, the reason to invest in the Lebanese armies if they demonstrate the will to do something.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what's lacking right now.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hezbollah's back is against the wall.
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're the weakest they've ever been, especially during the war.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're distracted obviously by a much more powerful enemy.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: They don't have the ability to fight a civil war right now while fighting the Israelis.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I imagine if they go to civil war, that opens up the room for the Israelis to actually go after them.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what we're lacking here is will demonstrable will by the Lebanese armed forces to go after Hezbollah when it's at its most vulnerable point and it's most exposed.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: That I'm constantly saying don't stab the resistance in the back because he knows the back is exposed.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that they're the correlator to that is we need to see the will not just for strong statements from the Lebanese government, but for strong action.
• 21:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't necessarily require
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with the implementation of the rule of law.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with something as minimal, as demonstrating that they roots word is sovereign on something as simple as passing out parking tickets and I'm being a little facetious here.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But something that low level against all militia members against all heads of all parties to show
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you don't get immunity just because you're semi-ajaja, or 9-cosm, or Mahmoud Akhmati, you are all equal under the law.
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once you normalize that, which for Lebanon has not been normalized in decades, the idea of rule of law, the idea that when a decision comes out of Beirut, that this is something that is meaningful, that it will be implemented.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once you normalize that, down the road, you can start talking about disarming Hezbollah in a meaningful way.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then,
• 22:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hezbollah's rejection of the Lebanese government's decisions becomes the aberration rather than the norm which is the norm and Lebanon.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right now, look, Lebanon's political map is too fractious for the kind of coalition that we're talking about, like March 14th.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: There isn't a unifying leader of the type of leader like Sad Hadi that it was, with his legacy, or carrying on the legacy of a figure as a significant, as Rafi Khariri.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: but the government now has the support of the majority of the Lebanese people to at least start the process of creating a normal state and a normal state presupposes rule of law and only a normal Lebanese state could begin the process down the road of confronting Hasbalah and eventually disarming Hezbollah.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, there's a lot's on packed there.
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want you for like literally one minute.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they very succinct.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's going on with the war with his balleright now?
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Israel, I mean, they're not actually fighting a super hot war, but they're getting hit.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: like how do we sum things up.
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It looks to me like the phase of the war between October 8th of 2023 and September 17th of 2023.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's this low level conflict where there's the tit for tat.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, Hezbo is been able to regain some playing some leverage on the
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: on the playing field, it's leveled a little bit more because of the ceasefire, because the ceasefire agreement, if you ask me, the April 16th ceasefire agreement is actually more restrictive of Israeli actions in Lebanon.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that has allowed Hezbollah to employ some of its lower level means to great effect of it.
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about the FPV drones, for example.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The big part of this is the lack of Israeli mobility.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: We wrote a piece John recently about Israel re-establishing the security zone and one thing we said is the mistake of the old security zone was the lack of Israeli mobility.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: This gave us a fixed targets and when you come to FPV drones, a big part of it is you have these fixed targets.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't hit what you're not seeing, what's moving, what's moving very quickly at you.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the ceasefire has put Israel in a static position, right?
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Remember President Trump saying Israel's
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: prohibited from continuing to bomb and Lebanon like they were before.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is giving us some advantage to leverage the playing field and restore the fight to what it looked like in the first stage of the war rather than when the Israelis intensified from mid-September to late November.
• 24:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, good summary.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Craig, we're going to close out with you here.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think this is a big question and maybe this is I'll frame it this way.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have an opportunity to sit down with Donald Trump, okay?
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're sitting there in the oval and he asks you, can the United States continue to engage constructively in the Middle East with all these clouds gathering in Asia over tech and Taiwan and everything else.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do we need to pivot or can we walk into gum?
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is the optimal way forward here with all of the moving parts that we've got?
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got a regional war that's been going on for two and a half years.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got an Iran war that erupted back on February 28.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got high stakes diplomacy with Xi Jinping.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got the Ukraine war with Russia, which we haven't really even talked about here right now.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's all these moving parts.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a really a pretty messy moment in human history.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I think what we're really seeing is like I said, what's happening in the Middle East and what's happening in the Indo-Pacific are bandwidth challenge.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Principles in the government only have so many times, so many hours in the day and every crisis that pulls US forces away from Asia or these other bigger issues on technology just gives Beijing more time to probe and to pressure and to wait us out.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: My big takeaway from this summit is like this summit did not break the US China stalemate It just showed how the stalemate works These two countries can work.
• 25:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: They can still transact on things like agriculture and aircrafts and trade But the real fights over Taiwan and technology and sanctions and rare earths and supply chains are wholly unresolved and I think Iran makes that clearer Beijing wants
• 26:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: stability, where instability hurts China, right?
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And destruction where it drains Washington.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the challenge to the United States is that we have to make sure that one crisis doesn't become a distraction that weakens deterrence and another theater.
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to be, I think the key challenges we wait to see how current conflict in the Middle East plays out and whether we can reach an end state that is in America's best interests, perhaps weakens
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: and how allows us to pivot more time and attention to handling the China Challenge.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, I think that's a good way to leave it.
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Want to thank you, gentlemen, for weighing in today on the FDD Morning Brief.
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, folks, that's your Friday episode and man, this week has been one hell of a year.
• 27:04
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• 27:11
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• 27:16
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• 27:23
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• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And thank you for it.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, scram, get out of here.
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: All of you.
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Go, enjoy your weekend.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've earned it.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: See you on Monday with more news and more analysis.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Until then, I'm Jonathan Schanzler, signing off for FDD.