Israel's Latest Victory Claims Get Smoked Out; Hormuz Comes Back To Haunt Him

[00:00:01]Right. So, Benjamin Netanyahu was apparently won again. Amazing, isn't it?

[00:00:06]Every few days, Israel wins so hard that another town in Lebanon has to start smoking. Another ceasefire needs to be hosed down. Another American official has to pretend this is all part of the plan. And then another poll appears showing that even Israelis are looking at Netanyahu's self-proclaimed victory parade here and asking why the wheels have come off his float. This time though, the win Israel is claiming to have is over Iran, though. Israel won the Iran war. Did you notice this?

[00:00:33]Netanyahu stood tall. Trump got his deal. The region was being stabilized, allegedly.

[00:00:40]But then Lebanon walked into the room covered in dust and smoke and bits of somebody's roof. And the poll turns out to not be so much of a win for Netanyahu actually because it amounts to just 11%.

[00:00:51]Just 11% of Israelis believe Netanyahu beat Iran along with 71% of them believing Trump is going to sell them all out to Iran.

[00:01:01]>> That's how they want to spin this.

[00:01:02]That's how this is being packaged. It takes air strikes and rubble and shattered homes and a ceasefire. But Netanyahu and Co are desperate to wrigle out of the latest example lasting for a grand total of, and I'm not joking at all, 5 minutes. and squeezes the whole thing into a narrative so soft you could use it to wrap crockery with. But this is the latest Israel victory claim getting dragged back to the scene of the crime now and being found wanting while it's at it because it's spinning a win of getting their horses handed to them and all for Netanyahu's benefit.

[00:01:34]Netanyahu needed this to look spotless.

[00:01:37]He needs Iran to look as if it was he who had contained them. He needs Lebanon to look like it's all very much ongoing warfare as usual there. Got to keep Israel safe. They're a bunch of wrongins over there. We've got to stay where we are. As if he's got his exemption to keep on striking them. He needed Trump's deal to look like the Middle East had been shoved back under American and more importantly Israeli control. But instead, the first thing you actually see when you cut through all the pro-Zionist bull is the smoke blowing back in his face. Only 11% of Israelis believe Israel won. 43% believe Israel lost. 41% say it ended inconclusively.

[00:02:15]So, that's not a nation convinced by its own government's war claims, is it?

[00:02:19]That's the audience leaving halfway through the magic trick because they can see the rabbit hopping around behind the curtain, but this particular rabbit is literally right there in the footage, too.

[00:02:29]>> Despite an agreement between the US and Iran and a reported ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli air strikes continue to bombard areas across southern Lebanon.

[00:02:44]This was the scene in Natia overnight where there have been dozens of strikes and artillery fire and at least five people have been killed on Saturday so far. The US Iran agreement insists the fighting must stop on all fronts including Lebanon.

[00:02:58]But Israeli troops have continued to expand their occupation of southern Lebanon. Shelling there has caused widespread destruction and the Israeli army is continuing its campaign of demolishing homes with new detonations reported in Kunin.

[00:03:15]>> Yesterday they said there is a ceasefire. We went to the south at 4:00.

[00:03:19]We left here. Today at 6:00 we were back here. The shelling spared no one.

[00:03:23]Everyone fled.

[00:03:26]>> Who do I trust? Trump? No, I don't trust Trump. Only if our people tell us go.

[00:03:30]That's it. There's nothing anymore. Then we'll go. We'll only listen when the parliament speaker or Hezbollah tells us there's a ceasefire.

[00:03:37]>> Yeah, that's definitely an image of an Israeli ceasefire there, isn't it? New cease, we keep on firing. Israeli attacks. Southern Lebanon is on fire again. That's what Netanyahu's win has to climb over. Scenes like that. And it's why that poll lands so badly for him, too. aside from the raw numbers alone. Because if you're telling people Israel has won, if you're telling them Iran has been contained, if you're telling them the region has been shoved back under your control, then the one thing you absolutely cannot have is a ceasefire package that looks like the ceasefire has already been mugged in an alley. And that's why they come out with crap like tensions continue in the media. This is why every bombed out street gets wrapped up in vacant and vacuous phrases like that. Israel claimed the war was won. And yet somehow their actions imply otherwise when it's still producing smoke, rubble, and dead civilians. Neata has been hit. Barrick has been hit amongst other places.

[00:04:31]Homes, infrastructure, all destroyed.

[00:04:32]And yet the war is supposedly won. And Israel won it. And amongst all the evidence to the contrary, of course, are the actual people.

[00:04:41]Across southern Lebanon, the scrape of brooms and shovels has become part of daily life as tens of thousands returned to see what's left after Israel scaled back its strikes. While many have returned to ruins, Hassan is among the lucky few. Raised in Los Angeles and still holding a green card, he chose to stay. His shop is still standing.

[00:05:00]>> We just want it to last, you know, to be like a final, you know, solution that brings an end to all of this. That's it.

[00:05:08]But we uh Lebanese people will not surrender. They will not. And they'll just keep that hope inside of them until uh peace is uh back again. Near Nabata, Nasser walks through what remains of a home that has been in his family for generations.

[00:05:28]>> Look at this house. It belonged to my mother and I spent my whole life in it with my father and grandfather. A huge part of our lives is gone. The comfort is gone. The love is gone.

[00:05:40]>> Even as residents return and begin rebuilding, the ceasefire remains fragile. A sense of calm and normacy is reasserting itself in various parts of southern Lebanon. But the same can't be said for South Lebanon's second largest urban district, Nebata, the center of which we are in right now. And the reason being as to why many people are not coming back to their homes here is because they don't have any homes to come back to.

[00:06:02]>> That's the part every war room likes to emit, isn't it? the bit they don't want to think about. The shopkeeper sweeping up the mess. The older guy who lost his multigenerational home and his story echoed by many others whose homes such as those in Nabata have been wiped out have nowhere to go back to the gazification of southern Lebanon because Israel will not be stopped even as that same report spoke of strikes easing off.

[00:06:25]Well, that's not the same as stopping then, is it? That isn't meeting the terms of a ceasefire. That's Netanyahu pushing the boundaries again as usual.

[00:06:33]>> Because rubble in a wide shot's one thing. Rubble with a person standing in front of it telling you what it used to be is quite another. Some people might be returning, but many others are not because the war is still happening. They are still being attacked. They're not returning because displacement has cost them everything. They paid for it in where their houses used to stand. And yet still some are returning because homes, even broken ones, will still pull people back. Whether they return or not though, they are filled with grief. And grief doesn't wait for Trump's deal or Netanyahu's spin or some American official with a flag pin and a dead look in his eyes to announce that some progress has been made. Cuz some progress doesn't put their house back, does it? This is where Netanyahu's claims curdle because his story needed him at the center of all this of this and in control. Iran over there, Lebanon over here, the ceasefire there on the paper, victory on TV, Trump pretending he's personally arm wrestled the entire region into submission. And that's what those bruises on his hands really are.

[00:07:30]The marks of a deal only he could craft.

[00:07:32]But not without his best buddy BB by his side.

[00:07:36]And then clips like that get out instead. And then reports get out and then footage blows up across social media. He doesn't get his fantasy anymore, does he? He gets smoke and explosions. He gets families returning or not to shattered homes. They give him a ceasefire being contradicted by him while supposedly doing its job when clearly it can't be because no ceasefire with Israel ever can.

[00:07:57]>> Welcome to the NewsHour. Heavy overnight fighting in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah militants threatened today to derail the initial US Iran agreement to end the war. But a lastditch effort to secure another ceasefire succeeded for now. And the Americans and Iranians plan to meet soon to begin to hammer out a longerterm accord. Our White House correspondent Liz Lander starts off our coverage again tonight.

[00:08:23]From dusk till dawn, Israeli missiles rain down on more than 100 targets, rocking southern Lebanon and clouding the horizon with smoke. More city blocks reduced to rubble. Lebanese health officials reported nearly 50 people killed. They did not say how many were militants. The strikes appeared to be the last shots against Hezbollah before a commitment to calm. A US official confirms to the NewsHour that Israel and the Iranbacked militant group agreed to a conditional ceasefire facilitated by Qatar and the US. But Israel says that it's keeping its forces inside Lebanon and after reasserting its right to self-defense appeared to hit Hezbollah after the ceasefire began.

[00:09:08]>> We are maintaining a forward defensive presence as long as there's a threat. As long as Hezbollah remains a threat, we will remain forward positioned. Israel says its latest strikes were to avenge four of its soldiers who they say were killed in a Hezbollah attack inside Lebanon.

[00:09:25]Israel's ramped up fighting in Lebanon and its rhetoric has threatened to unravel a new round of talks between the US and Iran. Both Washington and Thrron reached an agreement to stop the war on quote all fronts, including in Lebanon.

[00:09:39]A war of words spilled out across social media earlier today. Israel's hardline national security minister, himself convicted of terror offenses in Israeli court, wrote, quote, "With all due respect to the Americans, the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn." Iran's top diplomat replied, calling the Israeli government a quote genocidal death cult whose quote only interest is permanent war.

[00:10:08]I think Israel's foreign minister at the end there, Abasaraki, had it pegged quite well, don't you? Because this is where the whole thing starts to backfire properly. Washington didn't need Lebanon as a smoking footnote. That's not helpful to them at all. Trump didn't want the ceasefire looking like it was optional for Benjamin Netanyahu, who still denies it applies to him or Israel. Netanyahu didn't need the wand front he wanted to keep separate from everything, becoming the proof that actually his Iran win is nothing like a win at all. Yet, that is what he's done.

[00:10:36]And he's done it to himself because he's so desperate to see this ceasefire break. And we can see him doing it. He needed Trump's deal to fail without looking like he was the one holding the knife. But we see him. Ethany doesn't want Lebanon quiet. If quiet means Israel has to stop bombing them. He doesn't want the Iran deal working. If working means Israel loses its ability to keep bombing whatever front it fancies. He needs the ceasefire dead enough to give him room, but not so dead that everyone can see his fingerprints all over the courts. Preferably, he needs Tyran or Hezbollah to give him an excuse, and they aren't doing it. Well, that's where Lebanon becomes his big problem here, too. Because for every plume of smoke erupting there, and that might give him the excuse he wants, he thinks, if he could spin it right, perhaps, but not in a way that can ever make him look squeaky clean and not responsible for any part in it when we absolutely know that Israel is. They are the ones who constantly breach these ceasefires. And so, it goes here, too.

[00:11:30]And for those of us who follow this news, we can all see it clearly enough by now. Surely, we've seen it happen enough times. It's more predictable now than an Only Fools and Horses special being shown on the BBC at Christmas.

[00:11:42]And then the situation spreads again.

[00:11:47]Now, Street of Hormuz, the world's most important oil shipping choke point, is still showing signs of volatility after reopening announcement following the USN peace agreement. More than 20 oil tankers initially crossed the street according to the shipping intelligence firm Kippler. On Thursday alone, 25 commercial vessels transited Hormos, the highest daily traffic level since early June. The increase followed the lifting of the US naval blockade of Iranian ports and Theran's decision to allow ships to pass through the straight toll-free for 60 days. While the rebound is significant, traffic remains far below pre-conlict levels when more than 100 ships cross the waterway every day.

[00:12:26]The return of tanker traffic is an important signal for global energy markets. Three Saudi super tankers and one vessel from the UAE crossed the street on Thursday with each VCC capable of carrying up to two million barrels of crude oil. Iranian exports are also showing signs of recovery. Analysts say Iranian tankers that switched off their tracking systems during the conflict are now returning to normal operations while five Iranian super tankers were observed leaving the region. However, the recovery may not fully restore previous shipping patterns. Goldman Sachs estimates that oil flows through Hormus could eventually stabilize at around 70% of pre-war levels and this comes as Gulf producers continue to diversify export routes and reduce dependence on the straight. The realtime recovery is still fragile. Shipping activity appeared to ease again on Friday after planned US sedan negotiations in Switzerland were postponed.

[00:13:25]Ah, the straight of Hormuz again already, and nobody really needs a maritime law qualification to see why either, do they? Hormuz is the pressure valve. It's Iran's nuclear option, and we know they can close it at will, because they've done it before, and we're clearly quite prepared to do it again. That was the whole point of Trump's deal, wasn't it? The war stops.

[00:13:45]The straight returns are something more closely resembling normal, still to be discussed and negotiated. Iran does not squeeze the shipping. We can say that much. Not for a minute anyway. And the markets will calm down as a result. And Trump gets to wobble around declaring peace and hoping the Nobel Prize committee is watching it. Israel gets to pretend the Iran war produces something other than another regional fire with American fingerprints on the lighter.

[00:14:08]But Netanyahu doesn't actually want that deal working if the price of it is Israel having to stop all the warfare that's keeping him in power. He doesn't want Lebanon quiet. if quiet means Israel has to stop bombing Lebanon because then his neck is on the line and that corruption trail will catch up to him and be looming large again. He doesn't want Iran folded into a settlement if that settlement says Israel no longer gets its own war exemptions to beat up whoever it likes at US expense. He doesn't want Trump's deal alive if alive means Israel has to obey everything that drags Lebanon into the deal too. And so he needs the deal damaged and he needs it damaged enough that Israel can keep claiming emergency and keep claiming the need for Israeli security and keep claiming that the front is too dangerous to close and that he must stay. But he needs it damaged in a way that doesn't leave him standing there with the match still smoldering in his hand, smoke in his comb over and Lebanon burning behind him like the world's most obvious example of arson.

[00:15:03]And that's where all of this backfires because the more Lebanon smokes, the more Netanyahu gets the excuse he wants.

[00:15:09]And yet at the same time, the more Lebanon smokes, the more everyone else can see everything he doesn't want us looking at. His part in all of that. It says Israel is the one that keeps that front burning. It says Netanyahu wanted a loophole wide enough to drive a tank through and then acting surprised when the tracks led straight back to him.

[00:15:27]Because if the deal rests on Iran keeping the pressure off Lebanon and Israel keeps bombing Lebanon into dust, then why exactly would Iran keep pretending the pressure valve that is the straight of Hormuz has been settled at all? Why should Hormuse stay off the table if Lebanon remains on fire? Why should Iran keep easing the one point Trump needed sorted if Netanyahu is busy trying to torque the agreement at every other turn? That's the problem.

[00:15:51]Netanyahu wants the deal dead, but he wants Iran blamed for the body. He wants Trump's settlement weakened, but he doesn't want Israel named as the sabotur. He wants to keep Lebanon as his special little bombing annex, but he doesn't want Lebanon dragging Hormuz or Trump or Iran and Israeli public opinion all back into the same room. Well, too bad, sunshine, because there is no conceivable route to that scenario and the footage does all the damage to you.

[00:16:16]It takes a story Netanyahu want separated with Iran over there and Lebanon over here and Hormuz tucked away over there and the ceasefire in a drawer somewhere and Israeli victory pinned on the wall and it shoves all of these things back together. Now reduced to so much smoking ruin. Bareric turned to rubble. Families returned to shattered homes. Hormuz suddenly comes back up as an issue as a result. And suddenly Trump's deal looks more like a ransom note Netanyahu has been editing with an air strike. And then on top of that, that poll lands showing the people of Israel are no more fooled by Netanyahu's claims than anybody else is. His own public looked at the supposed victory and said to themselves, "Does this guy think we're idiots?" They didn't buy it.

[00:16:56]Only 11% said Israel won because most of the country, such as it is, can see the problem, too. Despite all of the censorship, they can see that a victory which needs Lebanon kept on fire, is not a victory. It's a stalling tactic. They can see that a ceasefire Israel keeps bombing through is not a diplomatic achievement, even though they probably just nod and carry on their daily lives any other time. They can see that an Iran win, which risks dragging or moves back into the picture, is not Israeli control. It's escalation again. They can see Netanyahu's game because he's played it for too long. They know him too well now. Kill the deal quietly. Keep the door for more war open. Blame someone else when that room catches fire.

[00:17:39]Lebanon has put the blaze on camera. And now Hormuz has come back to haunt him.

[00:17:43]And that 11% poll is the punchline for Netanyahu here because while the room catches fire, his machinations have been smoked out now along with it.

[00:17:52]for more on Netanyahu's misery with regards to Lebanon right now. Sure to put a smile on anybody's face because if anybody's misery can do that, surely it's his. Especially where he hoped to have a loophole to exploit on this matter that has now turned out to be anything but. Get more on that story right here. Please also hit like, share, and subscribe if you haven't done so already so as to ensure you don't miss out on all new daily content. Sort of spreading the word and helping support the channel at the same time, which is very much appreciated. Holding power to account for ordinary working-class people. I hope to catch you on the next one. Cheers folks.