Matt: Tuesday morning, the president of the United States posted this on Truth Social, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again, end quote. Tuesday evening at 6.32 PM Eastern time, 90 minutes before his own deadline, he posted again, a ceasefire, two weeks. Iran's 10 point plan accepted as quote, a workable basis on which to negotiate. was a double-sided ceasefire, he called it. Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif the mediator who made this happen announced the truce covered Lebanon and elsewhere basically the whole region Iran confirmed Hezbollah said it would also halt their attacks in Beirut people celebrated because as you know Israel has been bombing All of southern Lebanon but up to and including Beirut but in Beirut people were were celebratory You displaced families, some of them living in vacant buildings and on sidewalks for six weeks packed their belongings. Many got into their cars and started driving home. In Tehran, crowds filled Revolution Square waving flags for the first time in 40 days, the war felt like it might actually stop. And that lasted for about 12 hours. On Wednesday afternoon, yesterday, as I record this, Israel launched 50 fighter jets to hit 100 targets. using 160 munitions in 10 minutes. Across Beirut, southern Lebanon, the Beqa Valley, and Sidon. These attacks hit. There were no warnings for most of the strikes. Central Beirut neighborhoods that had never been hit before got hit. A car in the Sidon seafront struck while someone was driving home. The head of Lebanon's doctor syndicate issued an emergency call for every physician in every specialty to report to any hospital that they could get to. Hospitals called for donations of all blood types. And in all, least 203 people were killed, over a thousand wounded 12 hours after the ceasefire. Israel's defense minister called it the largest concentrated blow since Operation Beepers. He was proud of it. The IDF admitted most of the targets were located within the heart of the civilian population. This was the largest Israeli strike of the entire war. Not during the war either, during the ceasefire. Netanyahu's office released a statement that the ceasefire does not include Lebanon. Trump's response? He backed Netanyahu. told PBS that Lebanon was separate, called it a separate skirmish. Pakistan, the country that brokered the deal, said Lebanon was included. Iran said Lebanon was included. That was the condition. And Trump sided with the one party that wanted to keep killing after, by the way, signaling acceptance of Iran's demands to stop all conflict, including bombing Lebanon in return for opening the strait. Trump accepted this on socials. here's the question that if the United States negotiates a ceasefire and its closest ally launches its biggest attack of the war just hours later, and the president of United States calls 203 dead people a separate skirmish, who is actually in charge of American foreign policy? Like for real now, we know Israel dragged the US into war in Iran with no upside for the US, only loss possible by the way, there was no upside, no upside. Anytime people confront me with this, I ask them what was the upside and none of it is legitimate, none of it. There's just no gain here. But at some point, you know, if Israel called the shots getting into the war, you'd think at some point the Trump administration has to be able to say no, or we're not our own country. There's got to be a level at which doing the bidding of Israel is catastrophic. I mean, we're not there yet, thank God, but do we have to reach the level of catastrophe to be able to say no? Because that's what's next. Escalation, if we escalate from here, it either means ground troops or trying to take Karg Island or nuclear weapons. And all of that would be catastrophic for many different reasons. So how far are we willing to go for a nation not acting in our own interest? In fact, counter to our own interest. When do we get to say no? When does the Trump administration get to draw a line and say, we will not cross this? Well, let's talk through it. But first, ⁓ so this is what happened on Tuesday. So ⁓ the, it's important to get into and to kind of go through this timeline because the deal itself tells you something important about where the war actually stands. on Monday, Trump said Iran ceasefire proposal was not good enough. And by Tuesday morning, he was threatening to destroy an entire civilization. It was horrific to read both his, his comments on Easter Sunday and his comments on Monday. Tuesday evening accepted Iran's 10-point plan as a workable basis on which to negotiate that so it's a 12-hour reversal from rejection rejection to acceptance Nothing really changed. It was the same 10-point proposal that Iran's it's not even really a proposal. It's like these are our demands for us to stop the war and unfortunately Iran's kind of in a power position where the United States has not been able to topple the regime or Really disable their their armed forces not really because of how Armed forces are structured and the command line is structured in Iran. It's decentralized You have autonomous pockets of control all over the country. They've decentralized their their their leadership structure So you can't just take them all out with one strike and they can operate largely on their own so this happens we do these things and so The United States wasn't really able to overcome that not in any meaningful way I mean we killed a bunch of people thousands of people for sure And we knocked out some boats and some aircraft and some other things. But in terms of disabling disabling the military or its missile capacity, it hasn't really done that. and the United States because that the United States can't force open the straight of harm. It was like we know that now. So unfortunately, for ⁓ America, its honor and its place in the world. Iran's in a power position. In fact, we'll talk about this later, I think, but or at least within the days to come. But Iran, at the end of this might be a global player after this might this might really give Iran a lot of lot of power on the world stage, but but because of that, we weren't able to, you know, ⁓ inflict enough damage on on Iran, not really. So this 10 point plan from Iran is really demand is demand if you if you read them. And the full details haven't really officially been released, but Iranian state media has outlined these demands. You've got drop site media who's outlined them. They have connections within the government. But basically it's these things. It's a complete ceasefire across all fronts, including Lebanon. It's reopening the Strait of Hormuz during the two week period. It's a path to the complete withdrawal of US forces from the region, by the way, not just from Iran, continued Iranian control over transit through the strait so they can make money off of it. and critically a halt to Israeli strikes in Lebanon as a condition for the deal holding. They were very specific about this and Trump called it workable. ⁓ You know that word when you reflect on the positions that were both in that word does a lot of heavy lifting to workable It means we're accepting their framework as a starting point. Well, this is all these things are concessions basically by a regime that proved the US couldn't topple it Which is good and necessary to stop the war before it gets further out of hand but still workable where this ten-point thing a Day before a week before two weeks before three weeks before was not good enough These list of demands ⁓ what they really are was not good enough, but Trump's had enough But the United States after five weeks of bombing a billion dollars a day it's probably gonna be more than that It's gonna be hundreds of billions at this point, you know after five weeks ⁓ hundreds of billions of dollars bombing it back to the Stone Age, the rhetoric, civilization will die tonight, the rhetoric. United States accepted the terms of the country, it was bombing. That doesn't happen when you're winning, that happens when someone in the room finally did the math, right? What changed? We know that a large majority of Americans oppose the war. 66 % last count that I saw oppose. You know, it's not counting the people who don't know or have like can't commit to an answer. It's only like 20 % and falling of American of the American public who is for the war. That's astronomically low. That doesn't happen in war that low. This is the least popular war. Since polling began, I don't know. They pull in the Civil War, probably not Spanish American war. I don't know. So you've got a large population of the American public who are not into this war I don't know if that gets back to the president or not. I mean, he feels very shielded from reality ⁓ reality that's the kind of common Americans feel about this But anyway, you have that as some pressure you also have approval ratings that a second term blow. Maybe ⁓ almost at historic Lows at this point. He seems to be shielded from that as well. Well, I mean, we'll see But maybe there's some precious Pressure there, but he may see, he may not see. There might be pressure, we don't know. But what we do know is markets are in free fall. NATO's fracturing, prominent members of the government on all of Monday or all of Tuesday are calling for the 20th, 25th amendment. You Ron Johnson, a Republican Senator, publicly saying he was hoping and praying that Trump's infrastructure threats were bluster. So what changed? Iran Supreme National Security Council framed it as an enduring defeat for Washington. They said they forced the US to accept their plan. Whether that's spin or truth, the optics are what they are. The country being bombed back to the stone ages got the country doing the bombing to accept its terms. Here are our demands. And Trump called it workable. That tells you who was losing power and who was gaining power and the solution. Sad to say, I'm an American. I love America. This is ill-advised. That's an understatement. And the ceasefire itself was structured clearly. had Pakistan announcing that it covered Lebanon and elsewhere. You had Sharif from Pakistan specifically urging all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere. Iran confirmed. Arachi's statement from Iran, their foreign minister, I think, was explicit. Trump shared Arachi's full statement on true social without disputing a single word of it. He didn't dispute any of it. So it looked like the whole thing. Iran, Lebanon, Hormuz, all of it included in a workable plan for ceasefire from Trump. Iran's Supreme National Security Council even hinted the ceasefire would extend beyond two weeks if negotiations went well. These are good vibes happening all over the place. Talks were set for Friday, tomorrow. I think it's been postponed. But were originally scheduled for tomorrow in Islamabad. ⁓ That night oil dropped 13%, market surged. And for one night, it looked like the beginning of the end. And then Netanyahu made a phone call. So hours after the ceasefire was announced, Netanyahu's office released a statement. Israel, quote, supports the US effort to ensure that Iran no longer possesses a nuclear missile and terror threat. But then they say this, the ceasefire, quote, does not include Lebanon. I mean, it's clear. I did a video on this, you can find it. Just go follow me on Twitter, X, whatever, at Matthew Carano. can see it's, ⁓ I have it pinned right now. No, I don't have this one pinned right now. ⁓ You have to scroll down little bit, but I talk about this. think that the trade that Netanyahu is going to allow or Israel is going to allow is they'll stop looking for a regime change in Iran if the US supports their Israel's annexation of Southern Lebanon. I think that's what the trade is going to be. It sucks. I don't want that to be the case, but I think that that's what's going to be the case. think that's why you have as much military buildup Of ⁓ of marines in the area right now because I think I think america might help out It would be terrible and catastrophic and wrong, but that's what I think is going to happen But of course they're saying no ceasefire like they they already control a good portion of southern lebanon And they're trying to make sure that nobody comes back in they they kicked everybody out 600 000 people I think displaced from southern lebanon They blew up the bridges that connect southern lebanon to to the rest of the country They want it. They don't want to give it back And if they stop bombing, it gives the Lebanese a chance to filter back in to try to reclaim some of this land. So, and Hezbollah to push back a bit. And they don't want that to happen. So wasn't, we'd like to discuss Lebanon separately. ⁓ wasn't, have concerns about Hezbollah, they'll break the treaty. It wasn't that from Netanyahu. It was the ceasefire does not include Lebanon, period. It was a unilateral declaration from a country that didn't broker the deal, didn't mediate the deal. Wasn't a party to the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. They weren't asked. This was United States and Iran. And by the way, they can't be. Israel can't be asked because every time Israel gets a whiff of who the Trump administration might negotiate with in Iran, they assassinate that person. So Israel can't be trusted at the negotiation table because they'll destroy any opportunity for peace. Remember, Israel wants chaos for Iran. It doesn't matter if it comes with a humanitarian crisis. They don't care. They want regional hegemony so there can be no peace because peace means a strengthened Iran. You better believe it. If peace happens now, Iran is stronger. They have control of the Strait of Hormuz. They're gonna make a lot of money by getting countries who pass their oil through Hormuz to pay them millions of dollars per shipment. They're gonna be a more economically powerful Iran, a more globally influential Iran, right? You got so much of Asia dependent on Middle East oil that comes through that strait. They are going to be big players on the international stage. We did this by the way. You remember that. Any neocon who complains about the totalitarian regime, the terrorist state of Iran, just remember what you gave them. You gave them prominence on the international stage. You did this. Well, Israel can't have that. They want to be the great power in the Middle East. They want to be a world power. So, of course, Washington can't consult them because they'll assassinate the people that ⁓ Washington is negotiating with. So, of course, they were not consulted. And it's not only Iran, of course, they can't have peace in Lebanon. Israel can't have that because they want the land. And they, I'm sure, see this now as probably their last best opportunity to expand their borders for the middle to long term. Support for Israel has completely plummeted in the United States, their benefactor. This is not going to be sustainable. mean, the whole Trump administration is getting shellacked in the court of public opinion. because of its support for Israel. This is not going to happen. People are not going to get elected who are supporting Israel anymore. It's just not going to work. American public has had enough. So Israel knows that its days are numbered for this. It's like now or never to grab as much land as they possibly can. They took over Gaza. Check. Took over the West Bank. It's happening. Every day Israeli settlers terrorize the people of the West Bank. They're going to take over the West Bank. That's what's going to happen. Israel is going to take Gaza, the West Bank. Palestinians are going to be I don't know, killed or removed, and Israel's going to take southern Lebanon. They're just marching north through Southern Lebanon. Now think they control ⁓ six miles deep into Lebanon territory right now. So that's what they want. Pakistan, of course, said Lebanon was included because Iran is insisting upon this. That was a condition of this deal. And as I said, Trump shared Iran's full statement on his own platform without it. And then Netanyahu wasn't in the room overruled all of them. And he didn't just say it. He proved it. As mentioned in the opening on Wednesday, you had 50 Israeli fighter jets, 100 targets across Lebanon, 160 munitions in 10 minutes over Beirut, civilian apartment buildings. Watch the videos. They're horrifying. You see young girls who are taking a video of themselves and all of sudden the bombs are dropping and they are terrified. Killed at least 203 people. Some say 260, I'm not quite sure. Maybe that number goes up. don't know. The Beka Valley, Southern Lebanon, Sidon, Tyre. Israel's Defense Minister Katz called it a surprise strike compared to Operation Beepers that I mentioned before, which was the 2024 pager bomb attack on Hezbollah. And he framed it as something to celebrate. But again, watch the videos. They're horrific. You got frightened kids. You got murdered civilians. You got destruction of houses and apartments. These are big buildings just falling down after being struck by missiles, Israeli missiles. Hundreds of people murdered. The IDF said it was the largest coordinated wave of the strikes in Lebanon since the start of the war, as we mentioned, The strikes hit central Beirut neighborhoods that had never been targeted before. No evacuation warnings for most sites. People who had packed their bags and started driving home because they flooded from the south to the north into Beirut. to escape the threat, the Israeli threat, as they come marching over the Lebanese border. and they thought with the ceasefire, finally we can go back home. So they had packed all their bags and started driving home and they're caught in the bombing. A car on the seafront in Cedone was hit by a strike, killing the occupants inside. Displaced families who'd spent the night celebrating were running through the streets by morning. Lebanon's health ministry reported that, as I mentioned, 203 dead at least and over a thousand wounded. You had the Lebanese Red Cross deployed, a hundred ambulances. Beirut's biggest hospitals put an emergency call for blood donations. Lebanon's head of doctors called for every physician in the country to report to any hospital they could reach. A doctor from Medglobal in Beirut described the strikes as not targeted attacks. These were not strategic military targets. They were targeting. They went for apartment buildings. There were dozens and dozens of strikes across the city. She said her ears were still ringing from a building next to hers being hit. Lebanon's prime minister Salam said Israel attacks attacked densely populated neighborhoods and killed defenseless civilians. That's exactly what they were defenseless innocent civilians during a ceasefire Lebanon's Parliament speaker Barry called it a full-fledged war crime agreed and Trump's response was this he told PBS that Lebanon was not included in the ceasefire after he committed to it backed netanyahu's interpretation over pakistan's over his own mediator over the terms He shared on his own social media platform hours just hours earlier. It's a good dog. Good Trumpy dog Then jd vance was asked about it. He called it a legitimate misunderstanding. What the fuck kind of misunderstanding is that there's no misunderstanding It's been the same 10 points for weeks and weeks and weeks and trump was like, yep, this is workable Okay, let's all ceasefire now. ⁓ except for Lebanon. That's bullshit. Vince doesn't believe that for one second. He just lied about it. Then he said Israel had offered to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon because they want to make sure that our negotiations are successful. That's a lie too. And Vance fucking knows it. That's a lie. Israel does not want the negotiations to be successful. They want chaos in Iran so Iran cannot challenge them for hegemony. That's what they want. They don't care. if civilians get killed. Obviously, they killed so many civilians in Gaza. Ghoulish. They don't care if chaos ensues in Iran and it leads to a ton of civilian deaths. They just don't care. They want to make sure they have regional hegemony. That is all they give a shit about. They don't care about other people. If you don't care about the deaths of innocent people, no matter who they are, you are ghoulish, evil people. You're a ghoulish person. This is how it works. Israel acts, the US accommodates, and then the language just adjusts to fit whatever Israel already did. These are retroactive permission slips for massacres during a ceasefire. Netanyahu didn't ask Trump if Lebanon was included. He told him it wasn't. And Trump said, yes, sir. Here's what I keep wondering about. Someone inside the White House pushed for the ceasefire. Like remember what Joe Kent said after he resigned before the 12-day war, Trump had reasonable America first people around him like Charlie Kirk and Tucker and his generals advising him towards restraint. And by and large, it worked. I mean, it's not perfect, or preferred that Trump didn't strike Iran for those 12 days. but at least it was contained, it achieved an objective. The administration said, this is our objective, we're gonna stop their nuclear program in cold, and then we're done. And that's what happened. So at least it was contained. But before the war started a month ago, basically all advocates against it were purged from Trump's inner circle. I we all know what happened to Charlie Kirk, and then Tucker was frozen out, generals were fired or forced to resign. This keeps happening too. Hezgeth Hexeth. I butcher his name always keeps firing generals. Kent and Tulsi weren't in the room. We know that. So anyone who could potentially strongly push back against the war were removed. And what was left was a bunch of Israel firsters. So on some level, it's surprising to me that Trump came around on Iran's proposal. You know, you could say, well, maybe he was so desperate, he knew that markets were shit oil was going to go through the roof and There was no win, like there's no upside for this war for the United States. So why the hell are we there? There's only downside. So maybe he started getting desperate. I don't know. But maybe someone's getting through to him and if so, who is it? Yeah, but who was in the room? Kushner, Wikoff? I don't know if Mark Levin has any influence. I guess he was at the White House a couple times. But they all drove us into the war in the first place. And at the time, they must have known there was no upside for the United States. You'd be stupid to think otherwise. I don't think that they're stupid. So what they did was prioritize Israel's benefit and probably their own benefit. Somehow, I Kushner does a lot of deals in the Middle East. Very close to and both him and Wikoff very close ties to Israel. So Did that change though? Did they change their prioritization? Doubtful, but maybe. Trump didn't accept Iran's 10 point plan because he woke up feeling generous. On Monday, he said the proposal wasn't good enough. By Tuesday evening, he called it workable. So somebody made the case between Monday and Tuesday that this war has got to stop. And that's hopeful. But who is it? I mentioned before, as we know, very unpopular war, et cetera. But politics alone doesn't explain a 12 hour reversal from not good enough to workable. So someone had to sit in a room with the president and say, this war is unwinnable. The losses are mounting, the exit is now, or it gets worse. But who has that kind of access? We'll start with Wittkopf, Trump's Middle East envoy, real estate guy, no diplomatic experience. Sounds like he really screwed up the negotiations with Iran the first time. ⁓ But he's also the guy who pushed Israel on the Ra'afah crossing, which is the border gate between Gaza and Egypt. And effectively, it's the only way in or out of Gaza for over 2 million people. And Israel had kept it shut, controlling who and what gets through. But Witkoff pressured Netanyahu to reopen it, even threatening to move forward without Israel approval. And an Israeli official leaked to the press that Witkoff was endangering Israeli security. So it got to that level. Netanyahu was furious. So Witkoff has at least once been willing to push Israel on something that they didn't want to do, which puts him in a very small club, if you think about it, inside the administration. And he is the envoy who would have to deliver the deal. So he may have started as just this rubber stamp guy and realized that the rubber stamp is signing his name to a catastrophe. And then there's Kushner. He's behind the scenes on everything. And the same foreign policy criticism could be levied against him. It sounds like he really botched the first Iran negotiations. ⁓ But he's of like involved in every deal channel. So I wonder though, if at some point he like he's got a lot to earn in the Middle East, maybe part of the the The Gaza redevelopment certainly has got a bunch of investment from the rest of the Middle East. So, you he's a deal maker. He's doing deals all around the Middle East. Maybe at this point he had to recognize the deal environment is going to be destroyed here if it's perpetual chaos in Iran. And ⁓ by the way, if there's no Iran, happens to the strait doesn't just open. Someone has to keep it clear and you're going to just have it overrun by pirates. So you have to have someone in there controlling the strait. United States can't do that because what it would take is to, United States to own the entire coastline of Iran, which is huge. So that's not gonna work. No other country is gonna control the strait unless they invade Iran and take over the, ⁓ take over the coastline. It doesn't make any sense. So maybe he finally woke up to that. I don't know. There's another person, ⁓ Masad Boulos. ⁓ This one this one matters. This is Tiffany Trump's father-in-law. He's Lebanese American and If anyone in Trump's orbit has a personal stake in stopping the bombing of Lebanon, it's him He is reportedly the point person for Lebanon and has Trump's ear on the Middle East and You know if you're a man watching your ancestral country get bombed while sitting at the family dinner table It has a different conversation. You have a different conversation with the president than a political operative does so Maybe he got through. Then there are other wild cards. course, Elon Musk, I don't know how much involvement he has like after the Doge stuff, which is a huge disappointment. And I don't blame Elon at all for that, but he does get pulled into calls with foreign leaders. And he is one of the few people who can say things to Trump without consequences. I know he reportedly met with Iranian officials in New York about easing relations before the war started. And then his entire business suite, it benefits from global stability. He really has global companies. He has a vested stake in, you know, markets not crashing and believe it or not, even though he has electric vehicles, it's still not good for Tesla if oil is over or anybody if oil is over $100 a barrel. So whether he's actively pushing restraint on Iran, I don't know, but he's at least someone with access whose interests aren't aligned with Israel. So maybe He's a player in this. Maybe he helped convince. There's also JD Vance. I gave him shit before as I should. He's in it. I do. I have some empathy for JD. Like I understand he's in a tough position. He can't vocally oppose the president publicly. He can't. He's within the administration. too close to the administration. He just can't do that. It does suck that he covers for Trump. But of course he's going to be asked those questions. So I don't know. I guess the best case he's not being earnest and that sucks. But He did call the ceasefire a fragile truce. you know, he does come into politics as a little more anti-interventionalist than even Trump. He was more anti-interventionist on the Middle East wars than even Trump was, and Trump was pretty good about that. ⁓ The question is whether or not he's quietly advocating restraint behind closed doors and then just sort of covering Trump in front of the cameras I mean if that's the case fine. I'll take it if JD is is Advocating for restraint to Trump trying to get the ceasefire to happen And then sort of the last thing last like this isn't a person but a group is maybe the military itself. We know That there's been this pattern throughout the war. You've got Joe Kent resigned, had a hose, a whole Z report reportedly resigned over the boat strikes ⁓ in in and around ⁓ the Gulf, in the Caribbean. ⁓ There's almost certainly generals inside the Pentagon right now telling civilian leadership the ground operations around would be catastrophic. They would know better than anybody else. And we know a bunch of generals were turned over, I think 15 of them, something like that. They just can't say these things publicly without ending their careers unless they resigned. But those resignations and the firings tell you that perhaps internal resistance exists. So there is a peace faction. It's probably better than I'd even hoped for a few days ago. ⁓ or at least a fact, if not a peace faction, at least a faction that understands the math. And for a few hours on Tuesday night, they won. But the other side is strong because you've got Rubio, Secretary of State described by every profile profiler as a diehard Israel supporter. We know this. Trump made fun of him for it. Huckabee, the ambassador to Israel publicly denied the existence of the Palestinian people, supports West Bank annexation, got completely pantsed by Tucker in that interview a couple of weeks ago. a that guy is, but he has some influence. You've got David Friedman, who's the former ambassador to Israel, his pro-settlement. pushing to get back into the administration. got Mark Rowan, who's the CEO of Apollo Global Management, who sits on the Gaza Board of Peace. Hate that name. got Kevin Warsh, who's the potential Fed Chair, he's son-in-law of Ronald Lauder, who's the president of the World Jewish Congress. And you got, of course, Miriam Adelson, who's constantly in the president's ear, aggressively pro-Israel. And then outside of the White House is the echo chamber that... Trump seems to listen to, which is Levin, ⁓ Shapiro, Neocon Media, all of that. So that's still very strong, but Tuesday night told us that what I think it tells us is that the Israel first apparatus is very powerful, it's dominant, but it's not all powerful. ⁓ Someone got a ceasefire through, someone convinced the president to accept Iranian terms, someone won the ⁓ even if it was only for 12 hours. And so that... That means that there's a fight happening inside this administration for the soul of it, between the people who see the math and the people who see Israel's interests as identical to ours, which they're not. And right now the Israel side is winning. The ceasefire got torpedoed. But the fight isn't over. And the question is just whether the restraint faction can hold on long enough to prevent the next escalation. And I hope that they can. And of course, Iran is watching all of this and their response has been measured but clear. You've got the IRGC, which is Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, it's military, issued a direct warning on Wednesday and said, if the aggression against beloved Lebanon does not cease immediately, we will fulfill our duty and deliver a response. That's a military that's not the politicians talking. It's the military saying we will get involved again if we need to. You foreign minister Arachi's post on X the Iran US ceasefire terms are clear and explicit. The US must choose ceasefire or continued war via via Israel. It can't have both. The world sees the massacres in Lebanon, the balls in the US court and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments. They're not letting this go. That's about as direct as you can be too, from a diplomatic standpoint. Choose, ceasefire or Israel, you can't have both. You have parliament speaker, ⁓ Galibaph, I think is how you pronounce his name. He went further, he released a statement accusing the US of violating specific clauses of the 10-point proposal, including the Lebanon ceasefire condition. He called continued negotiations unreasonable, given the violations. This is the guy who weeks ago accused Trump of using fake talks to manipulate oil markets. He's not inclined to give Washington the benefit of the doubt, of course. And then you have Iranian state media reported that Iran would withdraw from the ceasefire entirely if the Lebanon strikes continue. And then the action that backs it up was this. announced alternative shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz, citing the risk of sea mines. After the Israeli strike on Lebanon, Iranian sources reported that oil tanker traffic through the Strait was halted again. Only limited Iranian and Chinese tankers were allowed through. So they reacted. Think about what this means. The single biggest win of the ceasefire, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the thing that dropped oil 13 % overnight is already being reversed because Israel bombed Lebanon. Israel's actions ⁓ aren't just killing Lebanese civilians, which is terrible enough. They're collapsing the economic relief that the ceasefire was supposed to deliver. The gas price drop Americans in the world were about to feel is gone because Netanyahu decided the ceasefire didn't apply to him and he wants Southern Lebanon. And Iran's position again is straightforward. You can agree with the Iranian regime or not. I'm not here to defend them, but their logic on the specific point is hard to argue with. You can't have a ceasefire that only applies to one side. You can't tell Iran to stop fighting and reopen the strait when your ally bombs Iran's ally next door. That's not a ceasefire. That's a pause while Israel finishes what it wants to finish in Lebanon. Hezbollah said it has a right to respond to the strikes. The IRGC said it will respond if the strikes don't stop. Iran basically closed the strait again. The talks scheduled for Friday in Islamabad are gone. Hopefully, we get them on Saturday. is not the first time Israel has destroyed a peace process. This is what just happens every single time. The November, 2024 Lebanon ceasefire happened. Israel agreed to stop fighting Hezbollah, then carried out airstrikes in Lebanon nearly every day for a month afterwards. 500 people were killed, including 127 confirmed civilians while the ceasefire was supposedly in place. And when Hezbollah started rebuilding and rearming in response, there's like, we're not gonna. We ceasefire, but we can't handle this. You're still shooting us during a ceasefire. So when they started rearming themselves in response, Israel pointed to that as justification for the current invasion. ⁓ they're rearming now after we bombed them, but they're rearming now, so we're gonna go invade their country. And then in Gaza, every ceasefire in the last two years that followed the same arc, there was an agreement announced. had violations within days. Israel resumed strikes, blamed Hamas. The international community would issue statements condemning them. Nothing changed. Even the current Gaza ceasefire, the one that Witkoff and Kushner apparently brokered, has been violated repeatedly. We've got at least 440 Palestinians killed by Israel since the ceasefire took effect. You have people starving because Israel is preventing food from flowing freely through, unmolested. You have reporters being targeted and assassinated in Lebanon and in Gaza still. And then during the Oman talks before this war, had five rounds of negotiations through 2025. Enrichment was the sticking point. A deal was described as within reach by late February. Then the US and Israel bombed Iran during negotiations. The Omani foreign minister was in Washington the day before the bombs fell and nobody told him. He was just used as cover for a war that was already planned. And if you go further back, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's own prime minister, he was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli extremist. because he pursued peace with the Palestinians through the Oslo Accords, who shot at a peace rally. And Rubin's wife still blames Netanyahu for this, thinks he him killed. That's how seriously the hardline faction takes preventing peace. They will kill their own leader over it. So this is a pattern. It's consistent across decades. And for Trump and the administration, and his administration not to know this would be ridiculous. Of course they know this, which is why they kept the negotiations that were happening through Pakistani proxies secret from Israel because they didn't want them to blow up the negotiators And right now Israel doesn't want peace Lebanon because peace means withdrawal. The IDF is six miles into the Lebanese territory with five divisions on the ground. Their defense minister said, displaced civilians will not return 600,000 people. You've got, ⁓ Israel newspapers reporting that the IDF is planning to continue the ground occupation of Southern Lebanon. Even after the war, the Iran war ends, they're going to continue moving north. They destroyed the bridges connecting the South and North. This isn't about Hezbollah, obviously, not really. This is about territory, Southern Lebanon. And it's the same playbook, as I mentioned, that occurred in the West Bank and Gaza. expand, occupy, destroy what was there, call it security, and when anyone objects, call them an anti-Semite. The ceasefire didn't fail because of a legitimate misunderstanding about Lebanon. It failed because Israel can't allow peace to succeed when peace means giving back land they've already taken. And the United States, which has the power to stop it with a single phone call, keeps choosing not to make that call, and it has to stop. We all know what's happening. The people of America clearly and overwhelmingly want it to stop. We can't be Israel's bitch and anyone in government doing Israel's bidding needs to be removed talking about you Randy Fine of Florida and there's no telling If this doesn't happen, there's no telling how bad it's gonna get when the government is so far off from doing the will of people it leads somewhere really dark if the government insists and The people don't want it. It gets more authoritarian It forces it upon the people and then the people have a choice of what to do about that put up with it or not, and both options are terrible, which is why it's so important to stop it now. Tuesday night, the United States and Iran agreed to stop killing each other. Pakistan brokered it. Both sides confirmed market surge. Oil dropped. In Beirut, families packed their bags to go home. And in Tehran, people filled the streets in support of their country and their government, not protesting their country or their government. They were ⁓ supporting their government. ceasefire existed. was real. Someone inside the administration fought for it and won. And for one night, the math, 66 % opposition by the American people collapsing approval, the gas prices, crashing markets, a fractured alliance overruled the structure that brought us into war in the first place. And whoever made that case deserves credit for it. I hope we find out because it's heroic. And for a few hours, it looked like the war might end and then Israel launched a bunch of jets into Beirut. the president of the United States said it was fine. That's the reality that we're living in. The United States can negotiate a ceasefire with a country it's at war with. It can accept terms. It can announce them on the president's own social media platform and a single phone call from Jerusalem or maybe not even a phone call, maybe just a statement from Netanyahu's office can override all of it within hours. The question I asked at the top of this episode was who is actually in charge of American foreign policy? And I think the answer is painfully clear. When it matters, When peace is on the table and Israel wants war, Israel wins every time because the structure around the American president has lately ensured that outcome. That structure is dominant right now, but it's not all powerful. The ceasefire happened, someone got it through. The restraint faction exists, if it's Boulos or Musk or maybe Vance behind closed doors. Almost certainly generals inside the Pentagon who knew what the ground operation in Iran would look like. Catastrophic. They're fighting inside this administration for the soul of it. That fight exists, it's real. The fight for Trump's legacy is happening and for the moral standing of our entire country. The question is whether that faction can hold before the next escalation makes everything irreversible because if this ceasefire collapses and right now it's collapsing, the next step is ground troops. It's Karg Island, it's Iranian nuclear sites, it's tens of thousands of American service members in a country of 88 million people that's been preparing for this fight for decades. This is a generational catastrophe. for the United States, for Iran, and for the world. No good can come of it. And we are right now in the window between a failed ceasefire and the next escalation. What happens in this window determines whether this war stays a loss but manageable or becomes something we can't come back from. The great Viktor Frankl in his haunting and beautiful book, Man's Search for Meaning, advised that a space exists between stimulus and response. And it is in that space that our power exists, our power to choose the right path or the wrong path. And we make that choice every second of the day as humans on an individual level. During the ceasefire, we also have a choice to make. We have the power to choose the right path or the wrong path, the moral or the immoral path. 203 people died Wednesday because the United States of America didn't say no to Israel and thousands more were killed before that. But somebody tried on Tuesday night. Someone inside that building made the case for peace and won for a few hours sanity held. That means the voices are there. the people who understand what's at stake for this country, for the region, for the thousands of civilians caught in the middle, they exist and they're fighting and I'm rooting for them. I think most Americans are, whether they know it yet or not, because the alternative is unthinkable. And I have to believe, I choose to believe that somewhere in that space between stimulus and response, the right people are there, willing to make the right choice before the window closes.