343. Lebanon: Hezbollah, Israel, & Fifty Years As A Battleground

Hello and welcome to Empire. And I'm afraid you've just got me again. Anita is busy but is going to be back next week in uh full fettle. But I am with my old friend Kim Gattus and friend of the show. Kim, welcome.

Great to be with you, Willie. Kim, we last saw each other in slightly happier circumstances at the Jaipur Literary Festival only, what, a a month ago, I suppose, about six weeks ago, but a lot has happened in that time and you are now not quite a refugee, but you're in an Airbnb displaced from uh from your normal house in Beirut. Do you want to just take us up to speed of what's going on in a very general sense in Lebanon at the moment. It's been an eventful 10 days in Lebanon and in the Middle East, of course, since the US and Israel launched a renewed war against Iran, a war without any legitimacy, without UN authorization, without congressional approval, regardless of what we, you, others, millions of Iranians think.

of the uh Islamic Republic and of its oppressive regime, this war started, as I said, without uh any uh real preparation, uh, and clearly without a proper war plan, but also without a plan for the day after. And I know we'll come back to that towards the end of the show. I live in Beirut, where I grew up and spent most of my life, and I have a knack for living on front lines or demarcation lines. I grew up very much on a demarcation line in a no man's land between East and West Beirut during the Civil War. On the Green Line.

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