French President Emmanuel Macron sent his strongest messages since the outbreak of the war in Gaza addressing Hamas supporters, Hezbollah, and Iran during a visit to Israel on Tuesday.
Macron was very blatant in his statements, proposing that the international coalition, created in 2014 under US leadership to fight the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, “could also fight against Hamas” and, by extension, against all groups gravitating in the Iranian orbit.
“I propose to our international partners” to work on building “a regional and international coalition to fight the terrorist groups that threaten us all,” he stated.
Warning against “a regional conflagration” in which there would be no winner, the French president called on “the Iranian regime” and its regional allies, notably “Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, not to take the ill-calculated risk of opening up new fronts.”
Speaking at two joint press conferences with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Macron said that Paris had already “sent several messages to Hezbollah to warn it against getting involved in the Gaza war.”
These messages had been relayed to the Lebanese authorities by France’s new ambassador to Beirut, Hervé Magro, and in particular by French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, during her brief visit to Beirut on Monday, October 16.
