Is Hezbollah secretly communicating with Washington?
The surprising stance of Hezbollah political council member Mahmoud Qmati that the party has not definitively closed the door to direct communication with the Americans, and that the decision will be made according to interests and appropriate circumstances, has raised questions among Hezbollah’s adversaries and allies alike, a media report said.
No denial has been issued by the party's media relations unit, which only clarified that Qmati was referring to the Islamabad track, not the Washington track, Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Monday.
Although Qmati's new position coincided with a statement by U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who noted that a solution to the Lebanese crisis cannot be reached without Iran and Hezbollah, multiple sources close to the Shiite Duo, some of whom are closer to Hezbollah than to the Amal Movement, confirmed to Asharq al-Awsat that Qmati's announcement "was not spontaneous or a personal opinion, but rather required of him; otherwise, the party's media relations unit would not have intervened to clarify."
Regarding the question of what has changed regarding communication with the Americans, after the party had previously viewed the United States as the "Great Satan," sources revealed that messages have been exchanged between the party leadership and Washington through local intermediaries as well as through Turkey and Qatar. They also did not rule out the possibility of indirect meetings, and “perhaps even more significant ones.”
The sources also said that the party does not object to communicating with Washington through intermediaries, but discreetly, as long as Iran is included in the communication.
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