An episode discussing the pending gap law, corruption, army spending, rebuilding trust in the banking sector, prospects for Lebanese-Israeli relations and America's diplomatic role at large.

With economist and Arab News columnist Nadim Shehadi.

Check out Nadim Shehadi's article 'Lebanon is not resilient, it is traumatized':

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2144181

and Michael Young's piece 'A Mechanism of Coercion':

https://carnegieendowment.org/middle-east/diwan/2026/01/a-mechanism-of-coercion

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Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

4:36 Protecting the criminals

7:08 Diversion from the real issues

9:05 Gap Law

14:43 Minimizing the state

20:30 Defending unpopular figures

22:18 Corruption in Lebanon

24:24 Investigations

30:38 Constant battering

33:10 Army spending & budget

38:10 Key element is trust

42:23 Discussion on Israel

44:29 Michael Young

46:29 “A Mechanism of Coercion”

51:12 Normalization - an internal matter

1:00:25 American positioning

1:06:07 “We’ll just go”

1:13:00 Turning 70