“In 1992, when Israel assassinated Sayyed Abbas Musawi, the then leader of Hezbollah, American and Israeli newspaper headlines claimed that his assassination marked the beginning of the end for Hezbollah,” Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian Ambassador to Germany—who, in 2004, was the spokesperson for the Iranian negotiating team on nuclear enrichment—told me. “However, fourteen years later, in the 2006 war, Israel was, in effect, stalemated, and the world was shocked by Hezbollah’s new power.
The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, [the Hamas political leader Ismail] Haniyeh, and other commanders of Hezbollah and Hamas will spark the rise of a new generation of resistance, even more powerful and determined than today.” Many of Hezbollah’s jihadist forces, Mousavian said, lost family members in previous conflicts.
Mousavian is currently a visiting scholar at Princeton and no friend of the current Iranian regime. (By 2005, he had come into conflict with hard-liners led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and cannot now return without risking prison.) Yet he sees a diplomatic opportunity for Iran here, too. “The new Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, came to the U.N. three days before Netanyahu, and spoke of a ‘new era,’ ” Mousavian said, “with Iran playing ‘an effective and constructive role in the evolving global order.’ ” Pezeshkian’s is not the only voice; Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is gathering political and economic power. Nevertheless, “relations with Israel go through Washington,” Mousavian said, and Pezeshkian’s offer should be tested. “The U.S. should open a broad dialogue, in which bilateral and regional issues are all on the table—including a renewed nuclear deal, a denuclearized Persian Gulf, ceasefire between Israel and Iran, a regional conventional-arms arrangement, and the security of the Persian Gulf.” He added, “I believe that Iran would respect a Palestinian decision, and if the Palestinians are on a pathway”—to a two-state solution—“then Iran would not impede or disturb it.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/why-netanyahu-wont-cease-fire
