Scott Ritter’s analyzes speeches by the leader of Hezbollah and Antony Blinken, and finds some common ground. From Ritter at azerbaycan24.com:
Supporters of the Lebanese movement Hezbollah watch a televised speech by its leader Hassan Nasrallah in Baghdad on November 3, 2023 © HUSSEIN FALEH / AFP
The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, delivered a much-anticipated speech outlining his organization’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. At the same time Nasrallah was speaking, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered some remarks of his own and took questions from the press about the Gaza conflict and the resulting humanitarian crisis that has gripped the Palestinians there.
In the leadup to Nasrallah’s speech, Hezbollah had released several videos suggesting that something momentous was going to come out of his presentation. Many observers, angered by the ongoing slaughter of innocent Palestinian civilians – many of them children – through the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza by the Israeli Air Force, believed that this was the moment when Nasrallah would unleash the might of the Hezbollah resistance, exacting revenge on an Israeli nation that had operated outside the framework of international law for far too long.
Other observers believed that Nasrallah would fail to rise to the occasion and would offer the Palestinian people, whose cause he claimed to champion, nothing more than empty platitudes when they needed a second front.
Blinken’s remarks, on the other hand, were not prepared in advance, but rather a byproduct of an American diplomatic intervention designed to preempt any potential Hezbollah action. The fact that Blinken and Nasrallah delivered their remarks simultaneously was no accident – Blinken was clearly seeking to distract from the Hezbollah leader’s ‘moment’.
