As the aftershocks of Israel's killing of Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon continue to reverberate, raising the specter of a region-wide conflagration, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan revealed that he had met with the Hezbollah leader in Lebanon just 10 days after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas unleashed the current cycle of violence by attacking Israel.

In a Sept. 28 interview with Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT in New York, Fidan said that his meeting with the Shiite leader in Lebanon had taken place under “challenging circumstances” and that “meeting him wasn’t easy.” The meeting likely took place in or close to one of the bunkers Nasrallah hid in during Fidan’s visit to Lebanon on Oct. 17 for talks with his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib, and other Lebanese principals representing different confessional and ethnic constituencies.

Fidan noted that Nasrallah was “a major figure in the region, especially for Lebanon.”

“His absence will leave a void that will be difficult to fill. His death is a significant loss for both Hezbollah and Iran,” Fidan said, adding that Israel’s objective was “to spread the war across the region.”