For the second time in nine days, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah appeared in a televised speech, knowing that both appearances fall into the same political context — one that was previously discussed in this column to indicate three reasons behind the timing of the two appearances and speeches.

The previous article detailed the first reason behind the appearance of Nasrallah, which was to confirm the religious tenets and the ideological justification of Hezbollah’s stance on the Syrian situation. The second reason was directly related to the political developments in Lebanon and its neighboring regions, starting with the visit of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov to Beirut on April 26 and 28. The Russian minister’s visit to the Lebanese capital after Tehran and Damascus is not without meaning. Clearly, Russia, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah have been coordinating at some level and have tackled all the regional developments and stances taken in this regard by any of the elements of this new axis.

However, amidst this coordination, the role of Lebanese leadership was attributed to Hezbollah. Two signs confirmed this idea in Beirut. For form’s sake, the Russian official ended his visit to Lebanon on the evening of April 28 with a long meeting with Nasrallah. This was the first indicator, while the second indicator that was more related to the actual content of the issue was represented by the confirmations of Russian diplomatic sources in Beirut that the Iranian officials whom Bogdanov met in Tehran only tackled the Lebanese affair from a general perspective. They expressly told him that the issue depends on Hezbollah’s stance and on Bogdanov’s meeting with him.

Meanwhile, sources in the know on the results of Bogdanov’s visit to the Lebanese capital revealed to Al-Monitor that the conversation clearly tackled the role of Russia in protecting the forces that are close to it in the region, as well as the importance of facing Washington and returning the balance to the global system in its Middle Eastern side at least. Moreover, both officials discussed the prospects of imposing the demarcation of the international spheres of influence in this region. In a clear and straightforward conversation, they brought up the different as well as matching ideological, economic, geostrategic and security-related interests of Moscow and local forces in achieving these goals.