Hezbollah is also not eager to ramp up its hostilities with Israel, the Russian foreign minister has told RT
Moscow does not believe that Iran, Lebanon, or militant group Hezbollah want the Israel-Palestine war to escalate into a broader regional conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told RT.
Concerns continue to be raised that the fighting between Israel and militant group Hamas could spill over into a broader Middle East conflict. Israeli officials have threatened to bomb Lebanese capital Beirut in a similar way to Gaza, while some US war hawks have called for an attack on Iran.
Moscow, however, believes there is “no appetite” for a major conflict in Lebanon or Iran, Lavrov stated, adding that neither country wants “any involvement in this crisis.”
The same assessment is true for Iran, Lavrov argued, regardless of an escalation of attacks by militia forces on American bases in the region, which Washington has blamed on Tehran.
“Yes, Americans say that some ‘pro-Iranian’ armed groups in Syria and Iraq are trying to attack American military sites,” the Russian minister said, describing such incidents as “nothing new.”
Lavrov suggested that the US military presence in Syria was clearly illegal and was questionable in Iraq, considering that the latter country’s parliament ordered the government to oust American forces in 2020.
Regional militias may be “agitated” by the mistreatment of Palestinians and proceed to “bite the Americans and the Israelis here and there,” but that does not indicate an intention by senior leadership to escalate the situation, Lavrov said.
He warned against perceiving this restraint as “weakness and a greenlight” for Israel to do whatever it wants in Gaza.
While there have been border clashes between Israeli troops and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, an organization “devoted to defending the Palestinian cause,” Lavrov claimed that recent televised remarks by the militant group’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah suggest that it has “no appetite for a big war.”
That may change if Hezbollah is provoked into action by an attempt to force Palestinians out of Gaza, the Russian diplomat warned.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned on Saturday that Hezbollah could drag Lebanon into the conflict, claiming that “what we are doing in Gaza, we know how to do in Beirut.”
