On Thursday, thousands of people attended the funeral in Beirut of Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy Hamas leader assassinated in a suspected Israeli attack in the Lebanese capital. His assassination on Tuesday has raised fears that Israel's war with Hamas could spiral into a wider regional conflict that could involve Hamas' Lebanese ally Hezbollah and their powerful backer, Iran.  Arouri was killed in a drone strike in southern Beirut. He was a key figure in the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, and a close ally of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the EuropeanUnion's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, are currently on separate trips to the region to try to quell a spillover from the three-month-old conflict. To look at the threats of a  wider war in the Middle East we are joined on the line by Anthoni Van Nieuwkerk, a professor on International Relations at the Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs