David Daoud - Did The Ceasefire Help Iran?

A new U.S.-brokered ceasefire has halted Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah but critics say the timing may have given Iran and its allies exactly what they needed: time to regroup. With shifting terms and new restrictions on Israel’s actions, questions are mounting about who really benefits from this deal.

David Daoud, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the program to break down what the ceasefire means, how Hezbollah could use it, and whether this ultimately strengthens Iran’s position.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the program. It's a pleasure to be with you. Well, as ceasefire just stopped Israel from finishing the job against Hezbollah, that America just hand Iran exactly what it wanted. I thought we'd talk about that with David Dowd, who is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, FDD. David, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Was this a good deal in any way, shape, or form before we get to the specifics about what it did with Israel finishing the job on Hezbollah, one of Iran's proxies?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

There was a critical uh locale that had to be taken by the IDF called Bintujel that would have dealt Hezbollah a significant uh military and morale blow had it been taken. Bintishbel uh is an iconic uh town in Hezbollah's resistance narrative. It's where Nasrallah once declared that uh uh Israel is weaker than a spider's web. And if the Israelis were able to control that, they would have been able to control several villages nearby. And if you saw the lead up, the narrative that Hezbollah was building and the lead up to the ceasefire, they were staking a lot on the ability to control Bintisbel, to repel the Israelis in Bintisbel. So had at least the Israelis been able to take that locale, that town, um, then uh things may have been in a better position. You would have deprived Hezbollah of an image of victory, which they try to present after every conflict.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Well, and the other piece to this is President Trump saying that he has prohibited Israel from taking any further action. Well, you know, I mean, uh there's certainly been a narrative that says, oh, all of what's happened with Iran has been dictated by Israel to the American president, which I don't buy. I don't buy that argument. We have to look out for our own security as well. And I think we would have had to do it whether Israel existed or not. But in this case, uh to have the president saying, I'm telling another country what they may and may not do, that may be a bit much as well. I wanted to get your take on all that.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Well, ultimately, it kind of puts to rest the notion that Israel is uh leading the United States in any way. And it reminds me of uh June 24th, uh 2025, uh right during the 12-day war, after Iran had launched a ballistic missile attack on Belsheva city in southern Israel, uh, several Israelis were killed, and the Israeli Air Force jets were en route to strike in Iran, and President Trump said turn the planes around, and that was that. Uh and this this is very reminiscent of that. And I think what President Trump is trying to do here is perhaps trying to give the Lebanese government some breathing room uh to deal with with Hezbollah. As they've been saying, they they you know, claiming they have been for the past 15 months. Um and their excuse is that Israeli operations uh have been hampering their ability to finish the job. Now, I think the facts really don't sit with the Lebanese. Um and uh you know the signals coming from Beirut over the past month and a half uh are not promising that they'll actually finish the job. I think it seems like they just want the Israeli war effort to stop and then to return to the business as usual. And that seems to be the picture of the thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

But David, in that case, does business as usual mean Lebanon just tolerates Hezbollah operating as a terrorist organization from their land and attacking Israel? Because that doesn't sound like it has good long-term prospects. Or is that what they mean?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Well, I mean perhaps not tolerating Israel, uh or sorry, Hezbollah attacking Israel in the mean term, but uh I think going back to a situation of doing nothing and just you know kicking the bucket down the road, that that that's what Lebanon did for the you know the 15 months between the November uh 2024 ceasefire and when Hezbollah restarted the war that Hezbollah had begun on October 8th of 2023. They said a lot of big things, they said a lot of things that were exciting that were un you know unusual for Lebanon that made it look like they were about to act. They even claimed the Lebanese army even claimed on January 8th of 2026 that they'd taken effective control over the southern Litani area. This is the area that's adjacent to the border with Israel. And as it turns out, none of that was true. Hezbollah was able to sustain a fight against perhaps the most intensive uh IDF onslaught in Lebanon in history uh for over a month. So kind of puts to rest the claims that Lebanon was really dismantling Hezbollah in any way. Um and I think what you know what's going to happen is a similar situation where for the foreseeable future, uh you'll have a lot of Lebanese hang-wringing and no action, and a periodic statement that you know excites the capitals in the West and kicks the bucket down the road. And meanwhile, Hezbollah will lay low. I think they may lay low for a very long time uh and slowly regenerate. Uh and you know, the the situation will be left up to the same inaction and unwillingness to deal with Hezbollah that we've seen from the Lebanese between 2006 and 2023. That's a lifetime, right? Uh and 15 months subsequent to that.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

I'm talking to David Dowd, who's a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense Democracies. David, it begins to sound like the whole world's full of a bunch of deadbeat do-nothings. And look, I I fault I fault Donald Trump when I think he's, you know, but we've got a Congress that doesn't want to act. We've got a NATO that doesn't want to act, we've got w European allies who say, oh, you're not actually asking us to do something about things like Ukraine that's on our own soil, or like uh the Strait of Hormuz, that's uh that's part of our region as well. No, we want you to do it all, and then we will sit back on the in the peanut gallery and criticize you. Am I wrong for seeing it that way?

SPEAKER_01 5:56

No, unfortunately you're not. I mean, look, I think uh the West is uh war weary, uh, and that would be a good thing if our adversaries weren't war weary, or if if our adversaries were also rather war weary. The problem is our adversaries, be it China, be it Russia, be it Iran, uh, they're taking advantage of this war weariness that seems to have set into the West in the United States. And can you blame us? We've gone through several world wars. Uh you know, the taste of Iraq is still fresh with most Americans. Um, and our adversaries are taking advantage of this uh to push us back to assert their control and assert their dominance. And unfortunately, uh in the conflict between the West and these adversaries, the West led by the United States, obviously, this is a marathon. It's it's it's it's a fight of who can hold their breath longer. Yep. And you know, it's not a fight of who has the more resources or who has the power more powerful military. It's who can hold their breath longer. And unfortunately, our adversaries have shown that uh they have a lot of patience.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Cheese eating surrender monkeys. Uh, David didn't say it, I said it, but that's David Dowd, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. David, it's always a pleasure to have you on the show. By the way, those spam texts and the scam emails you get all the time, the ones that flood your phone, well, they're not random. The scammers buy your personal info. And the data brokers, they're the ones who are selling it. Data brokers collect your name, your address, your phone number, even the medication you take, and your income too. And then they package it all up and they sell it to anybody willing to take the money, including criminals. I used Incogni to take back my privacy and my safety. Incogni contacts the hundreds and hundreds of data brokers, and they do it on your behalf because they can legally demand that data brokers take your personal data down. Although, how would you like to go out there and try to get hundreds and hundreds of data brokers to do that? I've already had my information scrubbed from more than 900 data brokers. And incogni, make sure your data stays gone for good. The result? Less spam, fewer scam calls. That's a big deal for me. A lot less of your personal info just floating around on the internet like clearance merchandise. Go to incogni.com slash L A R S. Stay in 60% sign up today. That's I N-C-O-G-N-I, incogni.com slash Lars, and you're listening to the Lars Larson show.