All eyes are on this Friday’s duelling narratives. Lebanon will see the first speech since October 7 by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken returns to the region, starting in Israel before Jordan and possibly Turkey. What does the US want? And what does Iran want?
Hezbollah has lost several dozen fighters in cross-border skirmishes since Hamas sparked the war with Israel last month. Do Tehran and its proxies want to keep the tensions on a low simmer or dial them up for a full boil? There are good arguments for both.
