The situation in Israel - Lebanon part two

Speaker 1: Welcome to The World of Intelligence, a podcast for you to discover the latest analysis of global military and security trends within the open source defense intelligence community. Now onto the episode with your host, Harry Kemsley.

Harry Kemsley: Hello and welcome to this episode of World of Intelligence by Janes with your host as usual Harry Kemsley. And I'm pleased to welcome back Sean Corbett as my co- host. Hello, Sean.

Sean Corbett: Hi Harry. It's good to be back.

Harry Kemsley: Good to see you again. We, last time in your absence, talked about the difficult situation that is ongoing in the Middle East around Israel and on that occasion, Hezbollah and Lebanon. We had Elliot Chapman and Suraj Ganesan with us last time, and I'm delighted to say they're back for a second episode on the same topic. So, Elliot, welcome back.

Elliot Chapman: Thanks for having me. Hi, Harry. Hi, Sean.

Harry Kemsley: And Suraj, welcome back to you as well.

Suraj Ganesan: Hi, Harry. Hi, Sean. Good to be back.

Harry Kemsley: Since we last spoke, I had quite a bit of feedback from listeners to the podcast episode we did last time, thanking us for the insights that we brought and also some of the summaries that we provided, Suraj, so that was all good. What we're going to do today is bring us up to date with where we got to from the last conversation. There were a couple of specifics that we left the last episode with, which we'll examine in just a moment. And Sean, with you back in the room, look to you to bring the conversation up to the more strategic geopolitical level as well as we look at some of the tactical details that we necessarily need to look at. When we last spoke, just to very briefly summarize, we identified the background, thank you, Suraj, to this, the genesis of this situation and the major events. We looked at the apparent strategy of the Israeli Defense Force interdicting multiple tiers in the Hezbollah structure from the strategic down to the tactical. We also observed that some of the impact on the tactical environment appeared to be, at that stage two weeks ago, relatively slight in that the intensity was being maintained by Hezbollah. So, it'd be interesting to see whether that's been maintained. We were looking to see where this was going in terms of over the next two weeks, will we see any sustainment, any increase escalation, any spread of this conflict, other involvements and so on. With that summary, Elliot and Suraj, you can just give me one grunt for yes, two grunts for no. Does that summarize what you recall from the last conversation?

Elliot Chapman: Yep, absolutely.

Harry Kemsley: Good. Suraj, just quick thumbs up from you as well.

Suraj Ganesan: Yeah.

Harry Kemsley: Good stuff. All right. Elliot, let me come to you first this time. In terms of the Israeli perspective, what has Israel been seeking to achieve since we last spoke? What are we seeing in terms of tactics and are there any expansions of the IDF operations, which last time we spoke were relatively contained and targeted? What have we been seeing over the last two weeks?

Elliot Chapman: I think actually, what we've been seeing is quite consistent with where we were last week. In terms of what Israel's been doing, it's been conducting targeted raids going after specific Hezbollah infrastructure. It seems to be quite intelligence led, so they're going after areas that they've pre- identified as having high concentrations of Hezbollah infrastructure. That infrastructure seems to be generally more focused on Hezbollah's Radwan force, which is its elite commando raiding style force, which of course, poses the immediate threat to Israeli systems in the north of the country, which of course these forces could potentially conduct a Hamas 7th of October style raid. That's been the nightmare scenario for Israel for a long time and they're seeking to actively degrade, and I'll use that word as sparingly as possible, these particular threatening capabilities that are positioned right on the border with Israel. Where we were last week was pretty much there. Where we are this week is still at the front line, let's call it, in a similar place. We're just seeing a slow movement of where these areas are that are being targeted. Israeli forces are kind of indicating that they're happy with the clearance of one area moving to the next but we're not seeing any extension to the depth of these operations. They're still quite close to the border in terms of the ground operations that are taking place, although they're moving where they're taking place along the border. The tactics involved in these raids are similar to what we've seen in the Gaza Strip. So, a lot of these units, in fact, all the units that we've recorded that are operating in southern Lebanon have had prior experience in the Gaza Strip conducting similar style operations of finding tunnel, underground infrastructure and destroying it. We're seeing the potential expansion to areas of the northeast of Israel and the southeast of Lebanon with things like de- mining operations by the IDF. It looks like they're clearing areas to get ready to potentially expand ground operations in that area. In terms of the different echelons that we spoke about last time, the real logistics strategic level stuff and the headquarters, it looks like there's been a little bit of a slowdown in terms of strikes in Beirut over the last week, although we've seen some of those still occurring but the high intensity strikes that we saw at the start of this conflict, that seems to have slowed down a little bit for now.

Harry Kemsley: All right. Let's turn, Suraj, to you then. We've heard from Elliot what we think we're seeing from an Israeli perspective, and of course, gents, in a while we'll come back to how are we seeing these things, what are the sources you're using from the open environment that allows you to make these statements. We'll come back to that later. Suraj, what are we seeing since the beginning of October in terms of trends in the attacks and what are the indicators in terms of the capability of Hezbollah from these Israeli tactics?

Suraj Ganesan: Well, Harry, I think we are seeing largely the same things. What we saw last week, Israeli forces, like Elliot said, they're conducting special raids and targeted clearing operations. And just to put some numbers to Elliot's assessments, I think in the past week there have been verified reports of at least two targeted raids on Radwan headquarters, where Israeli forces have seized mortars and ATGMs, IEDs and land mines and things like that. Just to add on Elliot's assessments over here, it seems to be largely the same. And Hezbollah forces continue to avoid a lot of close combat with Israeli forces. What we are seeing is firing of ATGMs from a distance and a lot of IEDs being planted along where Israeli forces are operating.

Harry Kemsley: Okay. When we spoke last time, as I mentioned in my summary at the beginning, we talked about this multi- tier strategy that appeared to be in place with the Israelis. We talked about the fact that they were clearly going after the executive leadership and taking out some critical capabilities, potentially breaking down that command and control loop that certainly in traditional military force you would assume would degrade capability. And we wonder whether that would start to be the case for Hezbollah. Have we seen anything like that Suraj from your experience? Sean, before I come to you, Suraj.

Suraj Ganesan: Yeah. In terms of addressing degradation of capabilities, there are a few points we must address first. The first being in terms of Nasrallah, the former secretary general of general of Hezbollah has stated numerous times or issued threats that Hezbollah would fire thousands of rockets a day into Israel. And a lot of assessments that we see around also shed light to that of Hezbollah increasing the range and number of missiles fired into northern Israel. But at this stage, I just want to bring into question the capability of Hezbollah to even do that. Sure, we know that since the 2006 war, they have increased their stockpiles with certain estimates, putting it between a hundred thousand and 200,000 rockets, missiles and mortars. But whether they have the capability to fire thousands a day is questionable at best. This would also assume that Israel would do nothing about it, which is not the case because on 25th August hours before Hezbollah was about to conduct retaliation attacks for the killing of Fuad Shukr, Israel conducted preemptive strikes on Hezbollah assets. To say that Hezbollah would somehow ratchet up the attacks to fire a thousand rockets a day is questionable. And secondly, in terms of something pointing towards the degradation of the capabilities is that we know from September 17th onwards, Israel has conducted an accelerated air campaign that has taken out a lot of key Hezbollah commanders. This would be from the Nasser unit, Aziz unit operating in the southern command front and also, the overall head of the southern command front, which is Ali Karaki, and also the overall head of the Radwan unit, Ibrahim Aqil along with Nasrallah as well. So, it appears right now that Hezbollah does not have the executive command to manage the stockpile and issue orders to fire thousands of rockets a day. The most we've recorded so far is 300, 350 rockets that were conducted in retaliation to killing of senior commanders. A third interesting indicator towards degradation of weapons stockpiles or capabilities is Hezbollah's lack of use of anti- aircraft weapons. In July of this year, we published a report on Hezbollah's use of anti- aircraft weapons. And since October 2023 to July 2024, we have at least six verified instances where Hezbollah used anti- aircraft weapons to shoot down Israeli drones and UAVs. But since July, we have not seen even one and out of the six that were taken down, at least three were in Nabatieh and southern governorates of Lebanon. Israel continues to operate UAVs in southern Lebanon and we don't see usage of anti- aircraft weapons by Hezbollah that would point towards potential degradation of certain capabilities among the group. A last point that I would like to highlight is a lack of a discernible change in tactics, techniques and procedures before and after an Israeli operation or airstrike is also a key indicator that could point towards degradation of Hezbollah capabilities. They are still conducting mass fire attacks, use of UAVs and motors but there hasn't been much change in techniques or procedures beyond that.

Harry Kemsley: Just before I come back to you, Elliot, just a second in terms of any implications of what you've just heard from an Israeli perspective. Sean, help us start to see this situation in a slightly different perspective as well any comments you've got about the tactical environment.

Sean Corbett: Suraj just teed me up very nicely on this one. The strategic intent here is to write down Hezbollah, and this is potentially terminal of Hezbollah. What's happening at the tactical level basically, is to stop Israeli citizens being attacked through rockets and all the rest of it. It's almost an enabler if you like, but what's really going on here is writing down the command and control of Hezbollah in such a way that it will take years and years for them to reconstitute even if they can at all. And we'll come back and talk to that in a minute because Hezbollah is a political organization, a political terrorist organization with a military arm or pseudo military arm, if you like. So, with Nasrallah going and the combination of... In terms of pure military capability and execution, it was brilliant. It is what you and I would call reinforcing success. So, Nasrallah gone, the pager operation, which timing was interesting. I think they had to do it because they were probably about to get rumbled on that. But what it did is it brought up a lot of the second and tertiary command structure up on the net, which was expected and they're now being targeted. So, you're taking not just as we've always done in counterterrorism, you take the bad guy out. Oh excellent, well done mowing the grass as we know it. This is actually far deeper. We're going down three and four levels. The command and control is blown, basically. What that means as well from a continuation piece is that the commanders that are left that have to be seen to be doing stuff politically are coming up on the net and they're getting taken out as well, which is why you're seeing quite a lot of unusual air activity in terms of why they're attacking there because they've clearly got a handle on these people. There's as much of that going on. And then there's the sustainability piece as well. So, just analyzing some of the imagery that's coming out there on explosions. There are a lot of secondaries, you can see. The big bang goes off to take out whatever it happens to be and then you see a huge secondary, which is a lot more than just the impact of that specific weapon. They're clearly targeting what they know as armories, all the rest of it. That then begs you in the question is, okay, what have they got left? Now, I think that Hezbollah are putting everything they can into it just to be shown to be still in the game, if you like. That's not going to happen for much longer, I don't think. And I think things are going to tail off.

Harry Kemsley: All right. Well, if we look for that tail off as you put it, Sean, and I'll come back to you in a moment in terms of the wider impact, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of the strategic geopolitical dimension. Elliot, you wanted to come back on something that Suraj was saying earlier. We'll come back to you then.

Elliot Chapman: Yeah, to link to Sean's point as well and Suraj's assessment before that, I think the interesting point of what Suraj was saying about what we're tracking on a day- to- day basis is that before and after this major air campaign by Israel, we're seeing just almost a continuation of the day- to- day level of intensity of attacks, let's call it, by Hezbollah. And I think that in itself is quite interesting from the perspective of we didn't see a huge drop or a violent increase either. And I think the lack of a violent change to reactive, let's call it, change to attack, is indicating that these massive attacks that have decapitated large portions of Hezbollah's command and control that there's almost no feedback, that's what it seems to see to indicate to me that commanders at the tactical frontline level are just doing what they can, it seems really, which is what they have been doing and that there's no additional support coming their way, really.

Harry Kemsley: Yeah, almost in the absence of any new direction given, do what you've been told to do previously and keep doing it if it's possible to do. Suraj and Elliot, I'm going to come back to you in just a moment to talk about... As before, what are you using as your sources? Any change, any update from the open sources that you're accessing to help you understand what's happening on the ground? Are there any particular nuances of this conflict which are worth mentioning to the audience who are interested in the power and utility of open sources? But before I go to that Elliot and Suraj, let me come back to you, Sean. In terms of, as you said right at the beginning, I mentioned a moment ago, the wider perspective, what does this conflict mean more strategically?

Sean Corbett: You know that I like to, when I'm studying anything, get whichever country that I'm considering in the middle of a map. It is fascinating. As soon as you see it, you think, ah right, and you can use that for any country, Russia. But if you look at it from an Israeli perspective, they felt, and they have been in many respects, surrounded by Iranian proxies for years and years and years. So, it is all in the context of Israel versus Iran here. Hezbollah, as you know, are a proxy force for the IRGC. Yes, they've got their own political requirements, but actually, even back to where they came from originally was a Iranian proxy. And their explicit aim is to exterminate the Israeli state. So, you look at that from a perspective of both Iran and then the other proxies within Gaza, the West Bank, et cetera, and you realize that actually Israel feel incredibly threatened. This is a sequence thing, before they start retaliating on Iran, which will happen, they need to secure their more border areas, but also the feeding of the arms and the training and all the rest of it from the IRGC. This is almost an enabling function. If they can write down the Hezbollah threat to the extent that the rockets are going to be manageable because they're always going to be the odd piece here, they've pretty much neutralized for a while anyway, the Gaza threat, next step Iran. So, what they're trying to do is making sure Iran cannot open a front if there happens to be extreme escalation between Iran and Israel. This is a really interesting time and the potential for miscalculation or indeed intentional activity to expand it is real right now. That's the strategic context. In terms of Lebanon itself, as I said before, Hezbollah are a quasi- political organization. In fact, not quasi because they actually have, I think it's at least three, it might be more than that actually, politicians within the Lebanese government. They've got their own quasi- state down the south where there's no love loss really with Hezbollah. But Nasrallah, in particular, put in many social enablers in terms of schools and all sorts of things, which has had to actually profited the very poor and neglected southern people. So, he's had that support base, albeit from a perspective as a whole, Lebanon as, look, we have to put up with these because they have got the forces that would well overwhelm the Lebanese, armed forces, et cetera, et cetera. So, writing them down is not necessarily the worst thing for the Lebanese existing government, the actual government or the Lebanese people themselves, which is why I say this could be existential for Hezbollah. That's on the Lebanese side but really, we need to look at this perspective between Iran versus Israel.

Harry Kemsley: Israel. All right, well perhaps when we come back to this conversation another time, we should have a conversation about the wider implication for the GCC countries, for example, who have an equally large concern about their neighbor to the north and maybe then broader still. But we'll come back to that. Let me come to you first, Suraj, because I want to tack onto that question I had a moment ago about sources and what you're doing in the open source environment to help you understand what's happening on the ground. I want to tack onto that a question about the government of Lebanon and their military forces, which we haven't heard or seen very much of and we think we mentioned it briefly last time. What are the prospects of the government of Lebanon and its own armed forces actually taking this as an opportunity to step into the void that is being potentially created around Hezbollah so they can actually start to superimpose themselves where perhaps the legitimate government should be? So, the first part of the question is open source, how are you doing it? What you're looking at? Anything about this conflict that makes it different? And then second, just tacked onto that, are there any signs for open sources about the government of Lebanon and how they might seek an opportunity from what's happening to Hezbollah?

Suraj Ganesan: Yeah, so addressing your first question in terms of sources we, touched upon this a little bit in the last podcast as well. It's looking at Hezbollah's statements, IDF statements. Of course, there's going to be a lot of discrepancies. That's where you use your knowledge of the country of the forces operating in the country to ascertain what's happening. A lot of local Lebanese sources as well, although they're biased, we can get a certain idea of what's happening. Usually, a lot of exaggeration claims come in terms of casualties on the ground, so that's much harder to ascertain. Hezbollah, of course, in terms of civilian casualties following Israeli airstrikes, Hezbollah usually tend to inflate the number of dead or injured. And similarly, you have the idea of sometimes maybe not even putting out these statistics, but yeah, you got to rely on Israeli local media, Lebanese local media, corroborate the information along with the statements. Also, the Lebanese, the government of affiliated media. They also put out a lot of statements in terms of Israeli attacks and things like that. And recently, since the ground incursion began, I've also been looking at UNIFIL statements that indicate where Israeli forces are operating and maybe some attacks on UNIFIL positions might not be intended from Israeli forces. So, yeah, those are some of the sources that I've been using.

Harry Kemsley: Okay, very good. Is there anything in those sources you're using that gives you any sense of what the Lebanese government might be looking at in terms of opportunity or indeed risk to them for what's happening with Israel?

Suraj Ganesan: Well, I cannot speak militarily because there hasn't been much indications of involvement of Lebanese forces or how they're viewing the issue. Of course, they're not happy about the Israeli incursion and that's been very evident. But politically speaking, Lebanon has been without a president for the last two years, so there's been a push from within Lebanon and also from outside actors like France, Saudi, Arabia, and the United States to elect the president because Hezbollah and the allies, they have 15 seats out of 1 28 seats in the Lebanese parliament and Hezbollah's key ally, the Amal Movement also have 15 seats. That's a total of 30 on the 128 seats in the Lebanese parliament. For the last two years, Hezbollah has been pushing Suleiman Frangieh, who is Hezbollah ally and also an ally to the Syrian president Bashar Al- Assad. Hezbollah has been pushing Frangieh to be the president of Lebanon. Meanwhile, the opposing Christian blocs, they've been pushing Jihad Azour, he's their main candidate. He's not a representative of any Lebanese political party, so he would be a neutral party. Since the ground incursion began and Hezbollah has been significantly weakened militarily, which is very likely following the Israeli operations, there's been a push to elect a new president. But it's unlikely that that would happen in the immediate to short term because there are a lot of moving parts. We did have the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, come out and release a statement saying that he's working with the Shiite Parliament speaker, Nabih Berri to work with the other political parties in Lebanon to elect a president. In the statement he suggested that they are looking to elect a president who doesn't represent a challenge to anyone. Not sure what that means. Not sure who the ideal candidate for that would be. Like I said, a lot of complications. But yeah, there is some, if I can call it that, an indication that they want to move towards electing a president.

Harry Kemsley: Yeah, okay. All right, well we'll come back to that point later. Let me come to you now Elliot, in terms of, again, your approach to the open source environment, any changes, any nuances that you've been using or seeing. And then from there, I think what we'll do there is we'll start to look forward, a bit of foresight, just like we did at the end of last time. What do we think the next couple of weeks is going to do to this environment? What can we look for in terms of indicators? Elliot, I'll come to you last on that question but first, let's talk about the open source environment you're working with.

Elliot Chapman: I think my answers remain similar to last week with one perhaps slight nuance is, I think why I described last week was, as Suraj did, we have a good understanding of the local media environment and we have a good understanding of primary sources, the way that the government or military organizations or whoever they are messaging. And then there's the more nitty- gritty, social media looking at what's coming through feeds from militant organizations or that thing. And then other tangential, perhaps non strictly speaking directly related to the topic but we can use to support our analysis, geospatial data, that kind of thing. I think one thing that I'm looking at right now is monitoring Israeli casualties. We're in a unique situation where actually the Israeli government is quite open about daily numbers of who is dying in which theaters. And we get inside into what units they're from. And this has also been, in retrospect as well, very helpful for looking at combat intensity in Gaza as well and that kind of thing. We saw, to that point in the first opening days of the ground conflict in southern Lebanon, quite a bad couple of first days, but since then we've sort of seen a much a slower number of IDF killed. That's another thing, for example, that we're building our own data sets onto it to monitor.

Harry Kemsley: All right. Thank you for that. Let's then start stepping towards, as I said a moment ago, foresight, I'll come to you first of all Suraj, what are you going to be looking for over the next week or two before we come back and do a third version of this topic? What are the things you're expecting to see and what will you be looking for? I'll come to the same question for you Elliot, from the Israeli perspective and then Sean, I'll come back to you on the same question in terms of the slightly more strategic perspective. Suraj first.

Suraj Ganesan: Yeah, Harry, on the ground in southern Lebanon, I think we are going to continue to see more of the same while Hezbollah attempts to reorganize and rebuild the organization, especially the executive command so that they can get things running. Until that happens with the ongoing Israeli air and ground campaign, we are going to see use of IEDs, landmines, mortars, ATGMs on Israeli forces. From Hezbollah, it's going to be more of the same on the ground. But Hezbollah attacks into northern Israel, that offers an interesting insight. Hezbollah, on 13th October, they conducted what we would call a significant attack targeting the Binyamina town in Haifa District. They launched multiple UAVs targeting the IDF's Golani Brigade and the attack killed four IDF members and enjoyed at least 58 others. That's a significant number since October 2023. And Hezbollah, following the attack, they stated that they are going to target IDF real positions in northern Israel and support lines, part of its defense against Israeli ground incursion into southern Lebanon. What we are going to see is more of that mass fires 80 to 100 rockets or maybe even several hundred rockets, unguided rockets into northern Israel to overwhelm Israeli air defense systems. Meanwhile, at the same time they would fire maybe precision missiles or UAVs to target key Israeli infrastructure or IDF positions to cause some sort of casualties. And that would enable them to then say, yeah, no matter what the IDF does, even within the ongoing ground incursion, we are still able to attack northern Israel and we will still make sure that northern Israeli civilians are not able to come back, which is basically the broader objective of this ground offensive into southern Lebanon by the IDF.

Harry Kemsley: Understood. Just before I come to you, Elliot, from the Israeli perspective, I guess if we see that the amount of activity doesn't sustain from Hezbollah then our hypothesis that they have been degraded in terms of command and control and as Sean was saying with the weapons caches presumably being targeted, that they're actually being degraded in terms of available material as well. So, we'll look for that indication the next time we speak. Elliot, turning to you then, what are you expecting to see from the Israeli perspective? Anything that you can foresee from what you're seeing out of open sources?

Elliot Chapman: I think in terms of indicators, it's directly showing us what's going to happen in the future. It's hard to tell, but I think I can perhaps analyze it from a broader Israeli interest and how they've operated in the past. And I think the Israeli government, this particular government and the Israeli military forces, are not really going to settle, I think, for a situation where they've done sort of a half job of degrading Hezbollah's frontline capabilities. So, I think that they will continue to try and see that through that they can say to domestic Israeli audience, we have materially degraded these underground bunkers and complexes and of course, done massive damage to the organization's stockpiles, command and control, all that stuff. I think we're going to see the continuation of this conflict. I don't think that the degradation of those capabilities is in and of itself the ultimate goal because of course, as Sean mentioned, it's never going to fully create a totally secure environment for Israel. And actually, so the ultimate goal is a political one, I think for Israel that they're going to seek to degrade Hezbollah to the point where they're happy that any subsequent political agreement is actually going to be enough to guarantee security for a while and buy them a lot of runway to then, I think, perhaps look to the conflict in a broader sense that I think Sean has mentioned as well.

Harry Kemsley: Okay. All right, Elliot. Thank you. Sean, over to you. What are your thoughts about the imminent future in this conflict area?

Sean Corbett: Yeah, I agree with lot's been said there actually you're never going to get completely get rid of the threat on the border, but it's going to be, I think, more opportunistic. You're not going to get rid of all the weapons either, so popups that aren't particularly targeted. What will be interesting is if they are effective in terms of some sort of tactical, where they're aiming for the military or just terror weapons into civilians. But as I said before, all that context is to try and reduce that threat for bigger things. So, it pretty significant that the U. S. have deployed the THAAD system now and are manning it to reduce that threat because there is a sequence here and even Israel with its military might can't really effectively fight a war on three fronts, just in terms of the enablers. So, reducing the threat on its immediate borders in preparation for whatever it's going to do in Iran. Now, almost certainly, there's been a trade- off and a deal between the Israelis and the U.S. to say, look, the US will have said we'll help you and we'll support you in return for, and the humanitarian thing is important obviously, but it's mainly just calibrate your response to Iran. There's a lot of reporting right now that they've agreed not to have a go at the nuclear systems or even the oil because of the global implications of that. How true that is, I don't know. But the Israelis will do something significant but not above the red line, if you like to call it that. The Iranians are worried, they really are. Both the leadership and the population is worried about the extent of retaliation. They know that Israel could give them a real bloody nose if they wanted to. If you look at the context, we've now written down your proxies, we're coming after you, unless you start behaving yourself and that's really the big message that's being thrown out here. In terms of strategically, what they're trying to do is slap around sufficiently to stay, stop it, just stop doing what you're doing. And there have been strikes in Syria from some of the logistics nodes that have been supplying both Hezbollah, and no longer Gaza, but Hezbollah as well. So, it's all enabling and shaping to send that huge political message, we're serious now, to Iran, stop doing what you're doing.

Harry Kemsley: All right, thank you for that. Let me offer this then as the summary of where we're going to go next. I think it would be very useful the next time we do this in a week or two's time, if we first of all, look to see whether we've seen any degradation in terms of the sustainment of the Hezbollah activity, which as I said earlier might indicate that they have been written down more than they would like to admit, whether or not we see any changes, Elliot, in terms of the Israeli tactics or apparent strategy. And then, Sean, the impact that's having on the wider. Clearly, if anything were to occur of a more strategic implication, then we'll bring the next podcast immediately forward and we'll do it around that, especially if Israel do do something spectacular into Iran or anywhere else. What I would like to do next time though, is I'd like to bring together the conflicts of this particular campaign. As you said, Sean, they're not separate wars, they're part of the same overall war that Israel is fighting. When you look at it look at it from Israel's perspective, they're just threats to their north and northeast. Let's look at Gaza, the situation on that. Let's look at the situation into Lebanon and potentially, the wider forum into Iran, particularly. Let's not, however, next time, overlook the impact it's having on the civilian population. We mentioned on the first episode of this, the migration of people perhaps back to Syria who had previously come from Syria to avoid conflict. They're now finding themselves in another war zone going back to their homes. Let's have a look specifically at what's happening on the ground from a civilian perspective because as often, as always is the case, not often always is the case with wars. It's the civilian populations that feel the brunt of it whilst the military go about their deadly business. Elliot, Suraj, thank you for coming back a second time and thank you in advance for coming back on a third, Sean, good to see you back in the room and joining the conversation. But without further ado, thank you all for this second episode in this difficult situation in Lebanon. And thank you in advance for the third, for our listeners as ever, if you have any questions, comments, or any particular topics you'd like us to cover, please do reach out to us. We're easy to find through the Janes website and you can send us a message which some people have been doing, more of which another time. Thank you all for listening. Bye- Bye.

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