- People are torn between wanting to express their devastation about Gaza and saying at the same time, "We want no part of this."

There's a lot of anxiety about what this might mean for Lebanon, and of course there's a lot of horror.

[soft music] - Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today, how likely is it that the Israel-Hamas war boils over into a broader regional conflict?

There are signs of the violence spreading as clashes increase on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, as well as Houthi rebels launching missiles at commercial cargo ships in the Red Sea.

Iran-backed militias are also ramping up their attacks on American military targets in Syria and Iraq, prompting Washington to respond with strikes of its own.

Tensions in the region are, to put it mildly, extremely high.

What will it take to keep the war in Gaza from spreading throughout the Middle East?

With so many competing interests, regional powers and proxy groups, how is it possible to avoid inadvertent escalation?

My guest today, Kim Ghattas, is a Lebanese journalist who has spent years reporting on the Middle East and international affairs.

And later, the story of the Japanese, quote, "Empress of Terror" whose group carried out a 1972 massacre at Israel's main airport.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

- Hello, Santa.

- But first a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator 2] Every day all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at Prologis.com - [Narrator 1] And by... Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at Cox.career/news.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York.

And... [bright music] [dramatic music] - Sparks are flying on Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

- There has been cross-border shelling between Hezbollah forces and Israel.

- The smoke rising there, the flames from a strike that just across the border inside Lebanon.

- Tens of thousands of people on either side have left their homes.

- Neither the Israeli military nor Hezbollah are using their most powerful weapons yet.

- [Ian] Could the fighting in Israel's north trigger a broader regional conflict?

Fears of escalation are high because Lebanon-based Hezbollah is Iran's most powerful proxy group.

Dubbed the world's most heavily armed non-state actor, it's estimated to have over 100,000 rockets and heavy-duty weaponry.

And its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said he might be willing to join Hamas's fight.

- [Translator] Fear that this could escalate or go into a full war or become a wider regional war is a realistic possibility.

- How did Hezbollah come to hold so much sway in the region?

Well, there's Iran, of course, but the militant group has also benefited from Lebanon's infamously fraught political landscape.

Hezbollah was founded back in 1982 with the help of Iran's Revolutionary Guards during Lebanon's brutal 15-year civil war to spread Shiite influence and also battle invading Israeli forces.

When the war ended in 1990, Hezbollah was the only Lebanese faction that was allowed to keep its weapons.

It continued to fight Israel's occupation in the south throughout the 90s and again in 2006, and also gained valuable combat experience in the Syrian Civil War fighting on behalf of dictator Bashar Assad, also a Tehran ally.

But Hezbollah gets another kind of power from the extensive social services and media networks it operates in Lebanon, giving it political support among the large Shiite population.

Though it lost its majority in the 2022 elections, the group has held seats in parliament for more than 30 years.

And meanwhile, Lebanon is in a power vacuum.

Domestic politics are deadlocked between religious interests, Sunni and Shia Muslims and Maronite and Orthodox Christians.

The divided Parliament hasn't been able to elect a president in over a year, and that gives Hezbollah a lot of latitude to operate independently on the border.

Making things even worse, Lebanon is a country reeling from an economic collapse and a refugee crisis from the Syrian war, a deadly 2020 explosion in the Port of Beirut and a massive currency devaluation.

You add to that, a war between Hezbollah and Israel would be utterly devastating for the country.

Iran has funneled billions of dollars in training and weapons to Hezbollah over the years, and that means the group rarely makes a move without Tehran's implicit blessing.

And so far, neither Iran nor Israel are interested in a direct conflict.

But proxy groups are a way to engage indirectly.

Those proxies can be hard to manage.

One misfired missile or a faulty rocket could mean the tinderbox at the border ignites to a full-blown fire.

Is a new northern front in the war inevitable?

And can Iran really keep its proxies from escalating?

And does it even really want to?

My guest today, Kim Ghattas, is a Lebanese journalist who has spent years reporting on the Middle East and international affairs.

Kim Ghattas, thanks so much for joining us again on "GZERO World."

- Thanks for having me, Ian.

Great to be with you.

- Let me start with the most basic, which is you're there in Beirut.

Talk to me about how people are relating to this conflict, to the war.

Is it dominating every conversation, and what are they saying?

How are people thinking about it?

- Ian, it's absolutely dominating everything.

Because of course, while the war is ongoing in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, there are also skirmishes, clashes, between Israel and Hezbollah.

And those clashes started in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack of October 7th and have continued to this day.

And so people are focused on the horrific images coming out of Israel first and then Gaza, but also very worried about what this might mean for Lebanon.

We know now that the US has dissuaded the Israelis from a preemptive strike against Lebanon in the first few days and weeks after October 7th.

But the concern is that a strike might still come.

And although Hezbollah and therefore Iran, its main patron, although they've shown a lot of pragmatism and restraint, and we can go into that, when it comes to how Hezbollah operates on the border, there are concerns that in the long term Israel will not be able to live, to continue to live with Hezbollah on its border.

So there's a sense that an Israeli strike against Lebanon is probably bound to happen at some point unless the diplomacy can find a way out of that.

So there's a lot of anxiety about what this might mean for Lebanon.

And of course there's a lot of horror at what is unfolding in Gaza.

And so the people are torn between wanting to express their devastation about Gaza, express their support for Palestinian civilians and saying at the same time, "We want no part of this.

"We've paid our dues when it comes to the Palestinian cause.

"We had our own civil war."

And there's a movement in Lebanon called Lebanon Against War to try to amplify this chorus of voices, which people hope will also be heard by Hezbollah and by the Israelis.

- Now, before we get to Hezbollah, Lebanon is, of course, a very diverse population.

It's hardly just a group of people that support Hezbollah.

It's a very large Christian population in addition.

Is there a sensibility inside Lebanon that the focus should be on Hamas and the horrors of what they did on October 7th?

Is there any among the Lebanese population, support for alignment with what the Israeli government has been going through and has to respond to, or not at all?

- It's very hard when you're on this side of the border and you have lived through Israeli invasions and Israeli bombardment of this country, to be able to continue to focus only on what happened on the 7th of October and not be entirely consumed by what is unfolded in Gaza.

In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon after an attempted assassination of an Israeli ambassador in London.

And that invasion lasted over two months with a siege of Beirut where the capital city was cut off of water, fuel, food, and 17,000 people died.

We forget, but that was a devastating moment for Lebanon at the time.

In many ways, indeed, it led to Hezbollah, and that's something that the Israelis need to think about today as they pound Gaza and say they want to eradicate Hamas.

Well, back in 1982, they wanted to eradicate the PLO.

And then in 2006 when they also got into a war with Hezbollah because Hezbollah had kidnapped Israeli soldiers on the border, they said they wanted to eradicate Hezbollah.

And yet here we are, Hezbollah is still incredibly strong, even stronger than in 2006.

- You've said that it might be hard for Israel to also live with Hezbollah there.

Not that they necessarily have good military options for removing them, but like Hamas, Hezbollah has an eradicationist ideology.

And so, what does that mean for Israel-Lebanon going forward?

How do you think it is going to play out?

- So what I found very interesting, and I've written about that in "The Atlantic" and the "Financial Times," is that Hezbollah's approach and reaction to October 7th and Iran's reaction has been one of rather interesting restraint and pragmatism.

But the expectation initially was that there would be an instant conflagration on the Lebanon-Israel border, and that has not happened.

And the way I explained that is we have to remember that Iran has for 44 years now claimed that it is a supporter of the Palestinian people and that its proxies, including Hezbollah, are there to help the Palestinians quote, unquote, "liberate Jerusalem".

So the expectation was that in the wake of the October 7th attack by Hamas, there would be a massive assistance by groups like Hezbollah to sort of push forward with Hamas's agenda and help Hamas further.

And what we've seen instead is Hamas complaining that Hezbollah is not helping them enough, is not backing them up enough.

And that's because I think Iran has come to realize that its use of the Palestinian cause or the Palestinian card has, in essence, bumped up against the limits of what is possible.

Hezbollah today serves one purpose for Iran.

It is to operate as a key line of defense.

Lebanon is seen by Iran as a forward defense space.

Iran is not going to use Hezbollah to defend the Palestinians or to assist Hamas.

It's going to keep that card for the event that Iran needs protection from a strike either by Israel or the United States.

And that's why the deterrence works on both sides actually, because Israel also knows that Hezbollah's capabilities have increased dramatically and it has 150,000 missiles, including many several thousand precision guided missiles.

So it will be devastating on both sides.

And I think the urgency is to try to find a diplomatic exit, a diplomatic outcome for this question.

And so I think it would be very interesting to see, where is Iran on the idea of a two-state solution today?

And I heard that from others as well, in Lebanon, from Iranians, just the idea that anyone would discuss two-state solution would have been impossible to imagine in those camps even a few years ago.

But the realization of what 7th of October has done and what it could signify going forward, I think has focused people's minds.

And I wonder whether there are compromises that people might be willing to make to make sure this does not devolve into a regional, widespread escalation.

- I mean, even if the border with Lebanon is seen to be relatively stable right now, the attacks of the Houthis, the radical Shia who are proxies of Iran based in Yemen, on shipping, on Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea and elsewhere.

And that is not an area that looks stable.

That's an area that's been escalating in this conflict over the past weeks.

And if the Israelis end up engaging in strikes against Iran, well, then all bets with Hezbollah are off.

So talk a little bit about that part of the equation.

- I do want to clarify that I don't mean to say that Iran will be at the table with the US and Israel.

I don't see that happening.

Iran can be at the table via proxy.

They have a channel today with the Saudis, which they have been using to signal that they don't want this to escalate.

But the issue with the Iranians is that they are experts at turning moments of jeopardy into moments of opportunity.

And the longer that this conflict goes on, the more they have an opportunity to breathe, to adapt, to recalculate and recalibrate.

And part of what we're seeing in terms of an escalation with the Houthis, but also in Iraq, is part of that.

They're pushing back.

I think it's still within limits of certain rules of engagement, if you will, that all sides understand.

But a mass casualty event on either side, and you can suddenly find yourself in a massive escalation that nobody can control anymore.

I think the more likely scenario is a horizontal spreading quagmire, where we have more of this for many, many months from Gaza with a potential insurgency setting in, with continued battles on the Lebanon-Israel border, just more of this, but for months, which makes diplomacy almost more difficult, if you will.

- So final question to you.

The long-term views of Israel in the region, and we were heading towards normalization with the Saudis.

We had the Abraham Accords with the Emiratis, with Bahrain, with other countries in the region.

On the back of the war that we've seen over the past couple months, has there been a sea change in the perception of Israel in the region, or not really?

And at the end of the day, we're still kind of in this environment where countries are gonna do what they need to do to look after themselves.

- I think there's a narrow window during which things can change.

I don't think we're there yet, but I think we're reaching that point where it's going to become harder to even utter the word "peace".

But I think the Saudis would still like to push forward with normalization.

Except that the Palestinian component of that is going to have to be much bigger.

- Right.

- If they were willing to go ahead with normalization with a small concession to the Palestinians as long as they got whatever they wanted from the Americans, that is no longer an option.

The Abraham Accords, I don't think are in any danger, but it's a bit cool at the moment.

And I sensed in many Gulf countries a somber mood setting in because in the first few weeks after October 7th, there was perhaps a sense that this would last as past conflicts have lasted, four weeks, five weeks, not more.

But now we're talking, the Israelis are talking about months, possibly a year.

Other dynamics then start to set in.

But the other thing that I found very interesting and very pragmatic, coming from a Saudi thinker that I was speaking to just a few days ago, he seemed very as a matter of fact about what was happening in Gaza.

There is outrage, there is fear, there is deep sympathy for civilians dying.

There is understanding of the horror of what happened in Israel.

But you know what he said to me?

He said, "Nobody's hands are clean.

"Look at what Iran did in Syria.

"You have half a million people dead there."

So there's a pragmatism about what would need to be done once the war is over if it ends in a way where it's still possible to bring people to the table.

But everybody's going to have to make concessions, and that includes the Israelis.

So again, I think there's a lot of pragmatism alongside the devastation and the feelings of sympathy and horror at the continued deaths of civilians, and a sense that there is still an opportunity to turn tragedy into something more positive.

But the mood can change.

If this somberness sets in for several months, it becomes harder to bring back people from the extreme positions that they've staked out and bring them back to a middle ground and really focus heads on the idea that in Israel's own interest, it needs to address the issue of a Palestinian state.

It has to be on the table as a serious effort.

- Kim Ghattas, thanks so much for joining us.

- Thanks for having me.

[gentle music] - Now look back at how militants from as far away as Japan got involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"GZERO"'s, Alex Kliment tells the story of a 1972 massacre at Israel's main airport.

[gunshots bang] - On May 30th, 1972, three men got off a plane at Israel's main international airport and gunned down nearly 30 people.

This was the aftermath.

The dead included an Israeli presidential candidate and more than a dozen religious pilgrims from Puerto Rico.

But as the details emerged, there was one aspect that people couldn't understand.

The attackers were Japanese.

What were they doing there?

Well, in the late 1960s, Japanese student radicals who opposed Tokyo's alliance with the United States had formed the Red Army, a hardcore communist militant group.

They would become so notorious for hijackings and hostage-taking that their founder, Fusako Shigenobu, was nicknamed the Empress of Terror.

But early on in demilitarized post-War Japan, it was hard for them to find weapons or training.

So they looked abroad to Stalinist North Korea and to Lebanon, where the Marxist guerrillas of the popular front for the liberation of Palestine were based at the time.

As early as 1971, Japanese fighters were already training at PFLP camps in Lebanon, honing their skills to wage war on the global bourgeoisie.

But the PFLP itself had a more specific agenda, tapping three of the Japanese fighters for the airport attack.

It was meant to be a suicide mission, but one of the attackers, Kozo Okamoto, was captured alive.

At his trial in Israel, he was defiant.

He sought the death penalty, and he had this to say about his victims at the airport.

[Kozo speaking in foreign language] He was given a life sentence, but was released in a 1985 prisoner swap with the Palestinians, and today he lives in Lebanon where he's celebrated as a hero of the Palestinian resistance.

Beirut refuses to extradite him to Tokyo, where he's still wanted on terrorism charges.

Japan did eventually track down the Empress of Terror herself, jailing her in the early 2000s.

When she was released in 2022, she expressed remorse for harming civilians.

The 1972 airport massacre belongs to a different era, before airport security for one thing, but also to a time when the Palestinian struggle was first attracting major international attention, in part through brazen hijackings and terror attacks.

Just days afterwards, "The New York Times" warned of a new wave of insanity that threatened to engulf the Middle East.

"There will be no security for Israel "or for the Arab states", the Times Board wrote, "until the Palestinian problem is solved "as part of a negotiated peace."

For "GZERO World," I'm Alex Kliment.

[gentle music] And now, to "Puppet Regime."

Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman is a man who has everything, except maybe the one thing that would make people really like him.

[soft music] - Thanks, Santa.

- Bye, little one.

Remember, be a good boy and stay off the TikTok.

Who's next?

- Hello, Santa.

- Oh, oh dear.

Merry Christmas, Mohammed bin Salman.

How unusual.

What would you like?

- Oh, I don't know.

How about Christmas?

[dramatic note] - Christmas itself?

- Yes, I've already taken over global golf, signed Ronaldo, landed the World Cup.

If I can't have Taylor Swift, then I'll take the second most popular thing in the world, Christmas.

- But you don't even allow churches in Saudi Arabia.

How could you-- - Ha, please.

Shopping is the new religion.

Ditch the church, take the merch is what I always say.

Now, look, I will offer you $2 billion.

- You can't just buy Christmas.

What do you think we are, FIFA?

- 3 billion.

- Well, that is a lot of money.

No, no.

Christmas isn't about money.

It's about things like generosity, goodness, goodwill towards all.

- Okay, boomer, look, Christmas is actually about the unchecked power of a bearded autocrat who answers to no one.

Nick, what I'm trying to say is you and me, we're not so different after all.

Join me.

- But you can't be serious.

Christmas belongs in the North Pole, not the Arabian desert.

- Okay, let me remind you.

As a white cis male Catholic saint, you should check your privilege on this one.

Christmas is originally from the Middle East, not the North Pole.

Do not make me get the #decolonizechristmas trending on TikTok.

- No, please, #dontcancelchristmas.

- My final offer is 5 billion.

Think about it, we'll build a sparkling new city for you and the elves.

Great benefits, good weather, no taxes, and everyone you know gets to be on the good list for life.

- Well, I suppose I have been at this for 18,000 years or so, but I'm just not ready to retire.

- Did somebody say not ready to retire?

[laughs] ♪ Puppet Regime ♪ - That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you've seen or think, hey, my government could run as well as Lebanon, hey, you know what that means, check us out at gzeromedia.com.

[bright music] [bright music continues] [bright music continues] [gentle tune] - [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator 2] Every day all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Narrator 1] And by... Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at Cox.career/news.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie, Corporation of New York.

And... [upbeat music] [bright tune]