MY MEETINGS WITH NASRALLAH

The assassinated Hezbollah chief had a vision for his country

Young demonstrators in Basra, Iraq, on Sunday carry posters of Hassan Nasrallah after the Israeli attacks in Lebanon that killed the Hezbollah leader. / Photo by Haidar Mohammed Ali/Anadolu via Getty Images.

I must confess that I liked Hassan Nasrallah. I had a few long meetings with him that began in the winter of 2003. It was a few months after the US invasion of Iraq, a response George W. Bush and Dick Cheney decided on two years earlier, in the aftermath of 9/11, even though Iraq was led by the secular Saddam Hussein who had no connection to Al Qaeda.

I was working for the New Yorker, and my beat was the war on terror. It brought me to Berlin that spring for a breakfast about 9/11 with August Hanning, the head of German intelligence. There was no need for a discussion of ground rules: Hanning and I understood we were talking strictly on background.