IRAN – The mood in Lebanon’s restive capital has darkened in the two weeks since Israel’s July 30 attack in southern Beirut that killed Iran-backed Hezbollah’s top commander Fu’ad Shukr and four civilians. 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.

Members of Tehran University Council attend a protest to condemn the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, shown in the picture at center, as they carry Iranian and Palestinian flags at the University in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, July 31 Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an airstrike in Tehran after attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president.

High-stakes Gaza ceasefire talks resume this week. Here are the main obstacles to a deal 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. (CNN)…[+]