Hezbollah is poised to attack Israel even if Iran chooses to avoid direct retaliation for the killings of Ismail Haniyeh and Fuad Shukr, US officials say.

The terrorist group, based in Lebanon and backed by Iran, is said to desire further revenge for Israel’s assassination of Shukr, its number two, and could strike without warning.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, feels compelled to avenge the death of his close adviser, said Sima Shine. Mr Shine is a former officer in Mossad, the Israeli security agency, and the head of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah is “more committed” to attack, Mr Shine said, as “Nasrallah personally feels obliged to his friend and colleague for so many years”.

The news that Hezbollah might attack Israel independently and ahead of Iran was first reported on Thursday by CNN, which said its sources were familiar with the intelligence.

One US military official told the channel that Iran had made some of the preparations needed to launch an assault – but not all of them.

A second source said Hezbollah could act with little or no notice, given the short distance between its missile launchers and Israel.

Two assassinations

Both Hezbollah and Iran have said they will retaliate for the killings – but not how. 

Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas terror group, was assassinated in Tehran as he visited for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. Hezbollah, of which Shukr was a founding member, is an Iranian proxy group.

While any further response Hezbollah makes to the death of Shukr is likely to be co-ordinated with Tehran, the terror group is still capable of acting independently at times, analysts noted.

Nasrallah said in a speech on Tuesday that the ambiguity around its response was part of “the punishment” for Israel, which has seen hundreds of international flights cancelled and a marked downturn in social and economic activity.

“The little anxieties pool together like beads of water on a tabletop,” said Linda Dayan, a journalist with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, of the mood in the country on Thursday.

Iran has said it will retaliate “at the right time” but officials have also stressed it is not seeking to escalate matters to a full-scale war.

In April, it launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel a full two weeks after an Israeli strike on its embassy in Damascus.

“How Iran and the resistance front will respond is currently being reviewed... This will certainly happen and the Zionist regime [Israel] will undoubtedly regret it,” General Mohammad Baqeri, Iran’s armed forces chief of staff, told state TV on Thursday.

The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a hard-line Islamist but has long embraced a policy of political expediency or “heroic flexibility” when it comes to international relations.

On Thursday, US officials indicated Iran was once again telegraphing its intentions ahead of time, giving the US time to to manoeuvre defensive military assets including aircraft carriers into position.

“Iran understands clearly that the US is unwavering in its defence of our interests, our partners and our people. We have moved a significant amount of military assets to the region to underscore that principle,” a senior Biden administration official told the Washington Post.

Much to lose

In recent years, Iran has developed important diplomatic and trading relationships with China, Russia and Saudi Arabia in a bid to counter US and Israeli influence in the region and has much to lose if it calibrates its response poorly.

Some analysts believe that despite tactical military wins, including the recent assassinations, Israel is losing the strategic battle in the region and that Iran does not want to disrupt that trajectory.

This view is rejected by many in the Israeli defence establishment and the country’s political Right.

“They want our blood and their honour back,” said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general and a fellow of the The Washington Institute, of the likely response to the killings.

“By desert rules, if you can’t protect your guests, you’re good game”.