In the speech delivered yesterday by Sayyed Naim Qassem, the deputy of the late Secretary-General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, questions seemed to crowd out the confused answers in the context of the deputy’s attempt to heal the party’s bleeding wounds and gather the fragments of its eroded strength under the weight of the harsh and unprecedented blows it was subjected to by an enemy intoxicated by the blood it shed in its quest to achieve its greater goal: luring Iran into confrontation and settling scores, once and for all, with its nuclear project.

Lebanon is nothing but the threshold and the starting shot for Netanyahu’s project that has been maturing on pillars of fire, smoke and waterfalls of blood for a year, through which he is drawing the features of the new Middle East, in which the wolf aspires to have the upper hand, taking advantage of the state of excessive fluidity in American politics, on the eve of the upcoming elections next November, and the global silence that has reached the point of collusion in his resounding crimes.

A ground invasion of Lebanon is Netanyahu’s next destination, to test the extent of “strategic patience,” calls for “tactical retreat,” and the effects of the vengeful throaty speeches that were repeated by a number of Iranian officials following Nasrallah’s assassination.

Whether Iran responds or not, the wolf will not lack the resourcefulness to create a quick pretext, even if it is in the form of targeting an ambassador or a synagogue in a distant country, to justify expanding the arc of fire, driven by desires for revenge and retaliation, to walk on the bloodbath and piles of rubble from Beirut to Tehran.