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       TEHRAN: Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, will travel to Lebanon for the funeral of long-time Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday, Iranian media reported.

       Tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out in Beirut to farewell the Iran-backed group’s leader. An Israeli air strike killed Nasrallah on Sept 27 last year at the start of an all-out war between his group and Israel after roughly a year of lower-level conflict.

       The massive air strike on Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold also killed Abbas Nilforoushan, a senior commander in Iran’s Quds Force — the foreign operations arm of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Hezbollah is part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”, an alliance of regional forces united in their opposition to Israel.

       In Oct 2023, Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with fellow axis member Hamas during the Gaza conflict. Those exchanges escalated into more than two months of full-scale war before a ceasefire came into effect in November last year.

       Ghalibaf “along with a number of parliamentarians and staate officials will leave on Sunday for Lebanon to attend Nasrallah’s funeral”, member of parliament Alireza Salimi told the official IRNA news agency on Saturday.

       On Friday evening, the Fars news agency reported that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi would also attend the ceremony. A memorial ceremony for Nasrallah will also be held on Sunday in Tehran’s main mosque and in several cities across Iran, IRNA reported. Nasrallah led Hezbollah for more than three decades and was a major figure in Middle Eastern politics.

       Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2025