The city woke up the next morning to find that another Iran-supported official, Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh, had been killed in an assassination in the heart of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
The chances of war, for months stowed away into the deeper crevices of this city’s psyche, had grown manifold.
“Do you think I am sitting in Hezbollah’s war room?” said one exasperated political leader with ties to the powerful Beirut-based armed group. “I have no idea what’s going to happen next. You probably know more than I do.”
Other officials in contact with Iran and Hezbollah said they were similarly in the dark as to how Tehran and its allied non-state fighting groups might deliver the “severe revenge” its top military officials, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have promised.
Israel said the attack in Beirut served as a response to a rocket strike that killed 12 children in the town of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which it blamed on Hezbollah. Hezbollah has vehemently denied the charge.
In his televised addresses since then, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said a response to the attack in southern Beirut was “inevitable,” dismissing Western attempts to prevent a retaliatory strike as futile. But he was scant on the details.
“God willing, our response is coming,” Nasrallah declared solemnly in one address.
“We may act alone, or we may act with the axis,” he said, referring to the Iran-backed network of armed groups that span Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.
The alliance of fighting groups has been referred to by some Israeli commentators as a “ring of fire” around Israel – no match for Israel’s military might but with a strategic depth that sends jitters through the country as it awaits Hezbollah and Iran’s anticipated attacks.
The messaging from Iran and its powerful non-state partner seems cryptic by design. Nasrallah and his backers have touted the benefits of the “psychological war” in which Israelis brace for an attack, with little sense of when that might come and what form it might take.
But there are also indications that Tehran is dragging its feet, held back by the prospect of triggering a wider war. One diplomat said he believed that Hezbollah and Iran had “trapped themselves” in their own vows of reprisals. Some have suggested that a possible ceasefire deal in Gaza may serve as an off-ramp, as the international community gears up for talks in Doha on Thursday. Iran has rejected the idea.
A region kept on high alert
The consequences of any reprisal are difficult to foresee. Both Iran and Hezbollah are looking to thread an extremely narrow needle, where they produce enough impact to deter future attacks on the Lebanese and Iranian capitals but stop short of igniting an all-out war.
This may prove impossible
