BENGALURU: The killing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday is a “big moral setback to the Lebanon-based Shia militant group, but they will not collapse. Nasrallah’s cousin Hashem Safieddine is being viewed as his successor. Militant groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis are not dependent upon a single leader,” said Aftab Kamal Pasha, well-known Indian analyst on the Middle East and former professor and director, Gulf Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “made a mockery of the international agencies by killing more than 40,000 people in Gaza, and now targeting Lebanon. He wants to expel Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai and Palestinians in the West Bank to Jordan so that the ‘River to Sea’ agenda of the Likud party is realised.”
“The Middle-East conflict and the Gaza genocide is pushing the world to a new international order led by the global south. The BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — is emerging as democratic and inclusive next alternative to the US-led international order post World War II,” he said, calling it the new P5 group like the UN Security Council veto wielding powers.
“India has come under a lot of pressure from the US because of its association with Russia and its emergence as a major player in BRICS, which now includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. The group is likely to expand further, with more than 40 countries keen on joining it,” the analyst told this newspaper from the USA.
India’s former envoy to Saudi Arabia, author and strategic expert Talmiz Ahmed said that the killing of Nasarallah is yet another attempt and provocation by Netanyahu to provoke Tehran into a war.
“The present conflict in the Middle East is Netanyahu’s personal agenda of permanent conflict in the region and to divert the attention of Israelis from his own failure of preventing the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel last year. he has snubbed US President Joe Biden and all calls for a ceasefire. There is no formulation that Israel led by its right wing government will accept. And now he finds this as a golden opportunity to finish Hezbollah as a military force,” said Ahmed.
“Netanyahu wants to escalate the conflict and draw Iran to it but Tehran will not bite the bait yet. It is not a conventional military power because of the long-standing US sanctions. This is why their spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been taken to a safe sanctuary. Any attempt on him will be catastrophic and will force Iran to attack Israel,” he added.
