Pod Insights If You're Listening Why Israel-Hezbollah threatens Trump’s Iran peace plan About this episode Donald Trump wants a historic deal with Iran. The problem is that some of the biggest obstacles aren't in Tehran or Washington. They're on the border between Israel and Lebanon.
In this two-part special, we trace the conflict that keeps dragging the region back into crisis. From Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the creation of a security zone in the south, to the rise of Hezbollah and years of cross-border fighting, this frontier has remained one of the Middle East's most dangerous flashpoints. More recently, Hezbollah attacks forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes, challenging assumptions about security in the country's north.
As diplomats pursue a new agreement with Iran, one question looms large: can this conflict be contained, or will it derail the deal before it's signed?
Listen to our 2023 episode on the history of Hezbollah: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/if-youre-listening/who-is-hezbollah-the-group-backing-hamas/103040512
Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app https://radio.abc.net.au/help/apps.
Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
0:09 Speaker 01 Hi, I'm Patricia Carvallis, the host of Politics Now. And sometimes it can be hard to cut through all the noise from the Canberra bubble. But on the Politics Now podcast, bursting it wide open is our core business. I'm joined by the brightest minds at the ABC to break down the polly speak and have a chat about what's actually going on behind the scenes. It's called Politics Now and you can find it on ABC Listen.
0:36 Speaker 02 This podcast was produced on the lands of the Uwabikal and Gadigal people. Do you remember back in February when Donald Trump said this?
0:45 Speaker 03 To the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered, don't leave your home, it's very dangerous outside, bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government.
1:00 Speaker 02 It was his first message announcing the beginning of the war in Iran. Trump boldly told the Iranian people to be ready to overthrow their government.
1:11 Speaker 03 This will be probably your only chance for generations. For many years you have asked for America's help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight.
1:24 Speaker 02 It was very inspirational rhetoric.
1:26 Speaker 03 Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.
1:40 Speaker 02 Now, when was the moment for action exactly? Did we miss it? Were any destinies actually seized? Because now Donald Trump is telling us that the war is over.
1:52 Speaker 03 On Sunday, we reached an agreement with Iran that achieves everything we set out to accomplish, everything and much more.
1:58 Speaker 02 The new deal Trump is negotiating appears to be essentially the same as the Iran nuclear deal struck by Barack Obama and torn up by Trump in 2018, except it's a bit worse. Well, it's much worse.
2:10 Speaker 03 Ending the current conflict, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.
2:19 Speaker 02 It seems that the promise to help the Iranian people overthrow their oppressors has been tossed down the memory hole.
2:30 Speaker 02 Regardless of what you think about Trump's deal, I think most people around the world would agree that the war being over is a good thing, even if the deal is embarrassing for one side. Unfortunately, there's a big thorn in Donald Trump's side here, and it starts with Bibi and ends with E.B. Netanyahu.
2:53 Speaker 03 In all fairness, E.B. Netanyahu, who happens to be a good man, gets a little excited sometimes. But he happens to be a very good man.
3:01 Speaker 02 A condition of the US-Iran peace deal is the end of hostilities in Lebanon. But Iran and the US aren't fighting in Lebanon. Israel and Hezbollah are. And in bad news for Trump and his peace deal, E.B. Netanyahu doesn't want to stop.
3:20 Speaker 03 We have a little dispute over Lebanon. I say you can do a little softer touch, E.B. You don't have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that's from Hezbollah.
3:29 Speaker 02 No matter what Trump says, E.B. doesn't appear to be slowing down.
3:34 Speaker 04 We established a security zone in Lebanon, and we shall keep it as long as is necessary to protect our people.
3:41 Speaker 02 The thing is, this isn't the first time Benjamin Netanyahu has dug Israel into southern Lebanon and refused to leave. He's been doing it since the late 90s.
3:50 Speaker 04 We are not going to be deterred, and we're not going to relent.
3:54 Speaker 02 The last time he did it, it cost him his job. But this time, he's convinced it's going to end differently. In fact, this time, he's worried that if he's forced to pull out of Lebanon by Trump's peace deal, that's the thing that will cost him his job.
4:18 Speaker 02 The story of what's really going on in Lebanon is complex. We're going to spend the next couple of weeks looking at it. First, we'll see what happened last time Israel invaded Lebanon. And then we'll look at what's different this time. It's an incredible story. It involves puppet states, exploding pages, spies, and helicopter crashes. And at the end of it, you'll see why this particular conflict is creating such a paradox for Trump and Netanyahu. I'm Matt Bevan, and this is If You're Listening.
4:57 Speaker 02 I've been covering various conflicts in the Middle East on this show for quite a long time, like since before my beard went grey. Nearly three years ago, for instance, we did an episode about the origin story of Hezbollah, the militia that Israel is fighting in Lebanon. Understanding the history of this conflict is really important, so we'll put a link to that episode in the show notes. But for the purposes of this episode, here are the highlights.
5:28 Speaker 02 Lebanon is the most religiously diverse country in the Middle East, by far. More or less evenly balanced between Christians and the two major branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia. Sunnis and Shiites do not always get along.
5:43 Speaker 05 Historically, the division between Sunnis and Shiites has led to intense conflict, which has at times erupted in war.
5:49 Speaker 02 But in Lebanon, the mountains have separated these groups. You have to be a lot angrier to attack someone over a mountain than across a plain. This has maintained a centuries-long balance. The thing is, that ancient balance of religions in Lebanon was shifting. After wars in the Middle East through the 60s and 70s, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees upset the balance. Palestinians tend to be Sunnis, and they were moving into an area dominated by Shiites.
6:23 Speaker 06 Nearly 30 years ago, they fled from the state which is now Israel. As refugees, they moved into other Arab countries, determined to win back the land which they believed to be theirs.
6:32 Speaker 02 After they were repeatedly pushed out of other Arab states, they ended up in the mountains of southern Lebanon.
6:39 Speaker 06 Thus, the Lebanon became their last refuge.
6:42 Speaker 02 Their presence in Lebanon led to two overlapping conflicts.
6:47 Speaker 02 One was a Lebanese civil war.
6:50 Speaker 06 The war has lasted 12 months. It has ruined a country and destroyed a nation. There is supposed to be a ceasefire in Lebanon, but it means nothing. There have been 28 ceasefires and each of them has been followed by even fiercer fighting.
7:03 Speaker 02 The other conflict was between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, or the PLO, which was a militia led by Yasser Arafat, and Israel. The PLO were using their newfound stronghold in the south of Lebanon to launch terrorist attacks on towns in the northern Israeli region of Galilee.
7:22 Speaker 07 A few hours ago, we stood in the shattered classroom where 21 Israeli teenagers were massacred as troops stormed the building trying to save them.
7:30 Speaker 02 The largest and most vulnerable town in the Galilee region is Kiryat Shumona. It sits at the bottom of a cliff with Lebanon at the top. The PLO used this proximity to their advantage. The PLO's tactic was to break the nerve of Kiryat Shumona and trigger an exodus from Israel's northern settlements. The people there were constantly under threat of attack from terrorists. Suffice to say, Israelis who lived in the Galilee towns like Kiryat Shumona were seriously concerned about their safety. 10 metres below ground, the schoolchildren of Kiryat Shumona spend one day each week studying in classrooms designed to withstand rocket and shell attacks. The Israeli government promised it would fight back.
8:15 Speaker 02 Israel served notice on the guerrillas that it's prepared to match murder with murder. But that was a long-term project. In the short term, the best way to protect these citizens was to establish a buffer zone between them and their attackers, to make the area less vulnerable. How were they going to do this? Well, the Israeli government figured they had two choices.
8:42 Speaker 02 Option one was to establish a buffer zone within Israel by evacuating everyone from the Galilee region and abandoning Kiryat Shimonah. But that was unlikely to be popular with the residents of the area who would need to leave their homes. Option two was to somehow establish a buffer zone inside Lebanon, north of the border. That would mean that everyone in Kiryat Shimonah and the rest of the Galilee region could stay put. But it would mean Israel taking control of a large area of southern Lebanon, which was filled with people who might not like that very much. Doing that with the Israeli military would be very difficult.
9:26 Speaker 02 Convincing the Lebanese military to do it would be impossible. They were in the midst of a civil war and anyway, they weren't keen to do Israel any favours. But if you can't do it and Lebanon won't do it, who else will?
9:39 Speaker 03 A right-wing Christian militia has carved out a state within a state in southern Lebanon. Known as Free Lebanon, its 100,000 residents live a precarious existence between combatants engaged in a 30-year war of attrition.
9:54 Speaker 02 In 1979, in the midst of the Lebanese civil war, a tiny new nation was created: the State of Free Lebanon. It joined a long tradition of countries with names that are, let's say, aspirational at best. Your Democratic People's Republic of Korea and your Free China, which at the time were not democratic or free at all.
10:17 Speaker 03 Free Lebanon is the name that Christian and right-wing militia have given to the 10- to 20-kilometre-wide corridor that runs along the southern Lebanon border.
10:26 Speaker 02 The State of Free Lebanon was a very, very strange little entity. It was set up by a Catholic officer who had defected from the Lebanese army, a guy named Saad Hadad.
10:38 Speaker 01 What we are asking is Lebanon for all the Lebanese, but also...
10:44 Speaker 01 Each one should have the freedom of practising his faith without being persecuted.
10:51 Speaker 02 Major Hadad had swiped a few tanks before he left the army, and said that they now belonged to what he was calling his "South Lebanon Army". He then used that army to carve out the territory, and declared that it was the only truly Lebanese part of Lebanon. Then, he declared himself president of the new enclave.
11:11 Speaker 06 He does have his own administration, his own militia. He's planning a television station and his first airport. And from his radio station here, he can beam his message to all of Lebanon, and to most of the rest of the Middle East as well.
11:25 Speaker 02 Now, this radio station was not at all what you'd expect in this part of the world. It was a mix of Hadad's propaganda and American Christian evangelical music. W O R D and K I N G, dedicated to bringing a measure of peace to a troubled world. Now back to music here at W O R D and K I N G.
11:50 Speaker 02 In the morning, I will sing of your love. It probably won't surprise you to find out that the business of running a micro-nation, complete with a militia and radio station, isn't cheap. In fact, it's one of the more expensive things that a person can do. Fortunately though, Hadad had a little bit of help propping the whole thing up.
12:10 Speaker 06 Hadad's so-called Free Lebanon can only exist with Israeli support.
12:15 Speaker 02 Free Lebanon wasn't really a country at all. It was a puppet state created for one purpose.
12:21 Speaker 06 The so-called buffer zone just north of the border is policed by a mainly Christian militia known as the South Lebanon Army.
12:28 Speaker 02 In the context of 1970s Lebanon, this wasn't actually all that unusual. The civil war was so chaotic that the central government basically wasn't operating. There were lots of little mini-states all over the place.
12:41 Speaker 06 The militia of the right are fierce in defence of the territory they still hold. Those who hold the high ground are impregnable.
12:49 Speaker 02 The Palestinians were basically running their own state in the south. The conservative Christians in Beirut were running their own state in the west. So really, what's one more state? It just so happened that the southernmost mini-state, the state of Free Lebanon, protected by the South Lebanon Army, was a puppet state of Israel.
13:11 Speaker 02 Interestingly, the residents of the area didn't kick up all that much of a fuss about their new leadership. South Lebanon is mostly populated by Shiites, who hated the Sunni PLO just as much as the Israelis did. The whole situation very much had "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" energy. So it did at least have a theoretical chance of working.
13:35 Speaker 02 The Israelis, along with Saad Haddad and his South Lebanon army, were using this conveniently placed stronghold to fight the PLO. So the local Shiites were more than happy to stay out of their way.
13:48 Speaker 02 The problem wasn't in the theory, it was in the execution. Saad Haddad's army wasn't really up to the task of preventing PLO guerrillas from getting through his narrow territory into Israel.
14:00 Speaker 07 Operating as it does with vintage weaponry such as Second World War Soviet tanks and plagued by desertions, this militia could not withstand a determined Muslim onslaught.
14:12 Speaker 02 Which meant the buffer zone wasn't working and attacks on Israeli civilians in the Galilee region continued. Prime Minister Begin claims more than 150 Israelis have been assassinated on the country's northern border during the last 12 months by PLO guerrillas in southern Lebanon. So in 1982, the Israeli military launched a full-blown invasion of Lebanon in an attempt to destroy the PLO.
14:39 Speaker 07 As the tanks rolled north across the border, they promised to bring a lasting peace to the population of northern Israel. They called it "Operation Peace for Galilee".
14:50 Speaker 02 The effects of the invasion were horrific. Lebanese civilians and Palestinian refugees were killed as Israeli forces swept through the country. But what started out as a punitive raid into Lebanon...
15:02 Speaker 07 and four weeks ago has turned into what some are calling the brutal final solution to the Palestinian problem.
15:10 Speaker 02 In terms of achieving its objectives, the invasion went about as well as the Iran War in 2026, in that it failed spectacularly. The PLO leadership, including head honcho Yasser Arafat, escaped to Tunisia, and hundreds of Israeli soldiers and thousands of Lebanese civilians were killed.
15:32 Speaker 02 By 1985, Israel realised that to fully achieve their objective of destroying the PLO, they would have to occupy all of Lebanon indefinitely, and that wasn't going to be popular with their international allies. So they withdrew to the buffer zone area that Saad Hadad had been guarding for them. The pretence of the state of free Lebanon was dropped at this point. This was now clearly an area of Lebanon under Israeli occupation to provide security for Israeli citizens living in the Galilee.
16:06 Speaker 07 Israel created this 75-mile-long buffer zone, placing Israeli towns like Matula, Kiryat Shmona, and Nahariya largely out of the guerrilla's rocket range.
16:15 Speaker 02 Now, by this stage, Saad Hadad had died of cancer, and his death, paired with Israel's invasion and occupation, had made the job of maintaining the security zone in the south of Lebanon much harder. Largely because the invasion and occupation had seriously upset the people who actually live in that zone.
16:36 Speaker 07 And it operates amongst a Shiite Muslim population, which Israel managed by its occupation to turn from a relatively neutral neighbour into an implacable foe.
16:49 Speaker 02 The Shiite Muslims in southern Lebanon had initially greeted the Israelis as liberators, hoping that they would crush the predominantly Sunni PLO. But the botched invasion and occupation that resulted in so many Lebanese civilian casualties had turned them against Israel. As the Israelis retreated, the citizens of the Galilee were again under threat.
17:13 Speaker 07 Israelis in the north are preparing themselves for a new onslaught. Their enemy may have changed, the Palestinians have been replaced by Shiite Muslims, but they are nevertheless preparing for the worst.
17:26 Speaker 02 Now, an important thing to note here is what those Shiite Muslim militants called themselves.
17:33 Speaker 07 Hezbollah, the party of God, the most fanatical of Lebanon's Shiite Muslims, are now firmly, openly, and successfully established in Beirut.
17:41 Speaker 02 Hezbollah, a political and military movement supported by the Iranian government under Ayatollah Khomeini.
17:48 Speaker 07 Day by day, their following grows, as once moderate Shiites abandon Western ways and embrace the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini.
17:56 Speaker 02 With Iranian financing, Hezbollah created their own quasi-state entity, which was pretty similar to Saad Harad's South Lebanese army. They even had their own TV and radio stations.
18:10 Speaker 02 Obviously, though, it was a lot less Christian music and youth pastor vibes and a lot more of this.
18:23 Speaker 02 Oh yeah, and they also had a lot of big scary weapons. The weapons are still coming from Iran, though most are now kept hidden close to the front line. But while Hezbollah had replaced the PLO as the primary threat to northern Israel, they were a slightly different kind of threat.
18:43 Speaker 02 While the PLO was focused on terrorizing Israeli civilians trying to trigger an exodus, Hezbollah was more strategic. They were primarily a challenge to the Israeli military, using civilian attacks as a tool of retaliation and pressure, not the main event. For the people of Galilee, they were a worry, but not one that made Kiryat Shimonah unlivable. They just needed to ramp up their protective efforts. The kids did their lessons in the bunkers, the Israeli Defence Force and the South Lebanon army patrolled the clifftop above them. To them, Hezbollah was more of a vague existential risk rather than something that invaded your nightmares.
19:27 Speaker 02 For the Israeli military, though, it was a different story. Nightfall is not an end, but a beginning of the fighting.
19:35 Speaker 02 believe to be coordinating their attacks, trying to make the Israeli army bleed. Gradually, the Israeli military casualty list grew, past a dozen, then past 100. And then one day in 1997, something happened that changed the Israeli population's appetite for the continued occupation of this part of Lebanon.
19:58 Speaker 07 They began burying the dead in Israel, the first of 73 funerals after a tragedy that has left the Jewish state stunned.
20:06 Speaker 02 The 73 dead were soldiers, killed when two air force transport helicopters collided just east of Kiryat Shimonah.
20:15 Speaker 07 Parents, brothers and a little sister grieved along with friends, in a picture being repeated in so many places across Israel.
20:23 Speaker 02 But the government knew that this disaster could have serious ramifications, not because of what had happened, or even how many people had died, but because of where the helicopters were going.
20:33 Speaker 07 The soldiers on board the doomed helicopters were being ferried to South Lebanon, where Israel's continuing occupation claims a steady stream of Israeli lives. It's increasingly unpopular and debate about its worth is intensifying.
20:47 Speaker 02 The people of Israel were fed up with the death toll on their northern border. But the prime minister at the time, a young fellow by the name of Bibi Netanyahu, insisted that this terrible accident wouldn't change anything about their strategy in Lebanon.
21:05 Speaker 04 We are not going to be deterred, and we're not going to relent. We shall defend our country, we shall reduce the risk, ultimately we shall achieve the peace.
21:14 Speaker 02 But protests by the families of soldiers deployed to Lebanon grew, and at the following election, Netanyahu was defeated by a candidate who had made a clear promise.
21:25 Speaker 07 The new leader has promised to withdraw Israeli soldiers from their buffer zone in southern Lebanon, without risking the security of Israel's northern residents.
21:34 Speaker 02 A year later, the IDF were out of southern Lebanon, and that area belonged to the Lebanese people again.
21:43 Speaker 07 Lebanon is celebrating liberation. Two decades of Israeli occupation of the southern 10% of the country finally came to an end in the early hours of the morning.
21:54 Speaker 01 The last Israeli tank rolled back across the border.
21:57 Speaker 02 And you might be asking, what happened to the South Lebanon Army? The outfit set up by Saad Haddad back in the 1970s? Well...
22:06 Speaker 01 Israel says it's preparing to accept 10,000 refugees, soldiers and supporters of the Israeli-backed militia, the South Lebanon Army.
22:14 Speaker 02 The puppet state collapsed instantly, like any puppet does when its strings are cut. Hezbollah claimed the former state of Free Lebanon just hours after the withdrawal. "Death to Israel" is the chant from Hezbollah fighters. It's not new, but now they're right on Israel's doorstep. Hezbollah fighters advanced right up to the border fence and started shouting "Taunt" at the Israelis on the other side. "We can't do anything when women and children are here", this Hezbollah fighter tells me in German, "but in the dark, you'll see, we'll kill them all." And yet, despite the clear threat of escalation, the violence did not escalate all that much.
23:01 Speaker 02 For the next 23 years, accepting a flare-up here and there, the border zone was relatively peaceful. But Hezbollah didn't want Israel to think they were no longer a threat. This prolonged window of peace gave them a lot of time to arm themselves.
23:18 Speaker 06 Hezbollah has about 100,000 missiles south of the Latani River in southern Lebanon. All those missiles are pointed in towards Israel.
23:26 Speaker 02 They were waiting for their moment to unleash those missiles. And that moment came in 2023.
23:34 Speaker 07 Israel has now launched artillery strikes into Lebanon after Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a number of mortar attacks.
23:42 Speaker 02 Following Hamas's attack on Israel on the 7th of October 2023, Hezbollah entered the war on Hamas's side.
23:50 Speaker 06 And we've already seen Hezbollah in southern Lebanon firing rockets into northern Israel.
23:57 Speaker 02 The attacks led to Israel doing something they hoped they would never have to do. They started evacuating Galilee towns.
24:06 Speaker 06 After days of escalating clashes on its
24:09 Speaker 07 border with Lebanon, Israel has declared some areas closed military zones, forcing residents to leave.
24:16 Speaker 02 The risk has emptied towns across the north. Its women and children are gone. As its men prepare for war. In the eastern Galilee alone, where Kiryat Shimonah is located, over 39,000 residents were displaced. And the people who left wondered when they'd be able to return to their homes.
24:37 Speaker 07 So you're worried about going back?
24:39 Speaker 01 Yes, of course. I'm terrified. I have a child, she's 10 years old. I don't want she live like this. It's a problem.
24:48 Speaker 02 Any conflict with Hezbollah is bound to be broader and could be even deadlier than the war in Gaza. The group is far bigger than Hamas. For a country built on the promise that Jews would always have a safe place to live, being forced to evacuate the Galilee again was a massive humiliation. It was an admission of strategic failure, essentially handing territory to the enemy. The people who fled were promised it was only temporary. They would be able to return home soon. But that was a promise that seemed like it would be very hard for Bibi Netanyahu to keep.
25:29 Speaker 02 Every day the Galilee was empty was another day that Netanyahu had failed to protect his people. It was a failure that would surely cost Netanyahu dearly when he needed to face an election in 2026. But here's the thing. Unbeknownst to the people of the Galilee, unbeknownst to almost anyone, an incredibly audacious plan was underway, a plan which Netanyahu and his government hoped would eliminate the threat of Hezbollah once and for all. It was a plan that had been underway for years, a trap that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was unknowingly setting for himself.
26:12 Speaker 02 That story is next on If You're Listening.
26:23 Speaker 02 If You're Listening is written by me, Matt Bevan. It's produced by Adair Shepherd and Pat Sunderland. Supervising producer is Cara Jensen-McKinnon. A quick public service announcement. Please stop sending atlases. The ABC Mail system is getting overloaded with them. If you watch the video version of the show, you will see that they're starting to pile up on my desk. We've received some incredible old atlases and we're figuring out exactly what we'll do with them. They are fascinating. Thank you so much to everyone who sent them in. We will take good care of them. On Tuesday... What are we doing on Tuesday, Cara? Micro Nations? I don't know, we'll figure it out. I'll catch you then.
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