1. Precarious: Dangerously lacking in stability or security; uncertain.

2. Repercussions: Unintended consequences or effects of an event or action.

3. Escalation: A rapid increase or intensification, often in conflict or tensions.

4. Confrontation: A hostile or argumentative meeting or situation between opposing parties.

5. Liaison: A person who establishes and maintains communication or cooperation between different groups.

6. Calibrated: Carefully adjusted or set for a particular purpose or situation.

7. Miscalculations: Errors in judgment or estimation, especially leading to adverse consequences.

8. Bear hug strategy: A term used to describe a close and supportive relationship, often in a political context.

9. Thermonuclear: Involving or relating to nuclear reactions that release a significant amount of energy, typically associated with hydrogen bombs.

10. Diplomatic: Involving or concerning the conduct of international relations between countries.

11. Unambiguous: Clear and not open to multiple interpretations.

12. Collateral damage: Unintentional harm or damage to people or property occurring as a result of military operations.

13. Humanitarian aid: Assistance and relief provided to people in distress, especially in war-torn areas.

14. Ceasefire: A temporary suspension of hostilities; a truce.

15. Ultimate conflict: Referring to a final or decisive confrontation, often used in a broader geopolitical context.

This is the Guardian today making sense of a violent week in the Middle east. It the first bomb went off at about 03:00 p.m. Not far from the garden of Martyrs cemetery in comman in southern Iran. A huge crowd of people had gathered there to memorialise Qassim Saleimani, a general who was killed years ago by the US military. As the sound of the explosion rippled through the crowd, people started to panic, screaming and running away. 15 minutes later, another bomb went off nearby. We are still waiting to get more details around the specifics of the motive, perhaps behind the attack, who may have carried out the attack. Iranian state media, again citing officials, have characterised this as a terrorist attack. But again, at least 84 people died in the attack on Wednesday, making it the worst bombing since the islamic republic was founded. Iran’s president has vowed to take revenge. He initially blamed Israel, but late yesterday Islamic State claimed responsibility. 2000 kilometres away in Lebanon, a day earlier there’d been a separate attack. A drone strike in a residential suburb of Beirut killed one of the leaders of Hamas. An explosion in Beirut has killed Saleh Arurri, a top official of the palestinian militant group Hamas. Lebanon’s prime minister has blamed the israeli government and accused them of trying to drag his country into a regional war. And in the Red Sea, more violence on the route towards Israel. Rising tensions in the Red Sea after A-U-S. Strike on Iran based rebels that left several dead. Iran is now reportedly deploying a warship to the region. Three flashpoints, all separate but connected, warning that conflict is brewing across the region. The Middle east at the moment is in a really precarious state with a number of flashpoints through which Israel’s war in Gaza could spread and spark something far broader. Original war. From the Guardian, I’m Hannah Moore. Today in focus, is Israel sliding closer to a regional war? Julian Borger, your world affairs editor for the Guardian. And this has been an extremely violent week in the Middle east with potentially some massive repercussions for Israel. In Lebanon on Tuesday, a senior Hamas leader was killed in a drone attack and the israeli army, although they haven’t confirmed this, are thought to be responsible. Tell me about what happened. Yes, it was Tuesday night, and in a rather nondescript building in Dahir, which is the southern suburb of Beirut, there was a meeting of Hamas leaders. And as they were meeting, the building was hit with what can only be described as a precision strike by several projectiles. And it was clearly an attack informed by very good intelligence. The photographs of the building showed that the third floor where this meeting was happening, has a gaping hole in it, and the projectile penetrated through an outer room to this inner meeting room where Saleh Ala Aurori, the principal target, a very senior Hamas leader, was chairing this meeting. Yeah, it really is quite astounding when you see the images of that blasted out building. Tell me a bit about al Aurori, how important he was, what role he played within Hamas. Al Aurori was an extremely important figure in Hamas. He’s one of the founders of the Qasam brigades, the armoural wing. He was a deputy chairman of the Hamas Polypuro and in charge of West bank operations and attributed by Israel for having been instrumental in planning the 7 October Hamas attacks. And perhaps more importantly, he was Hamas’s liaison not just with Hezbollah, but also with Iran. And he was key in forming the bonds between Hamas and Iran and Hezbollah in the interests of fighting common enemies in the shape of Israel and the US. So, just to clarify, Hezbollah is the largest political and military force in Lebanon. It has ministers in the country’s government, but it’s classed as a terrorist organisation by the UK, by Israel and by other governments. It’s backed by Iran and it’s an ally of Hamas, which, of course, Israel is aiming to eradicate. How, if israeli forces are responsible for this attack, how significant would Alaruri’s death be in coming towards that aim of eradicating Hamas? Very significant. In terms of if they are planning to cross off the top hierarchy of Hamas, as is their aim, then that is a very important objective achieved already. Perhaps the most accessible of the external leadership, because the other senior leaders are in Qatar, there’s some in Turkey, but Beirut is clearly somewhere they felt they could strike without heavy diplomatic consequences. I want to understand what this could mean for the relationship between Lebanon and Israel. They’ve got a fraught history, and for this killing to happen in a residential area in their capital city is obviously surely going to cause trouble. What has the lebanese prime minister said about it so far? The lebanese prime minister, Najeed al Mikati, has called it a crime that it was bound to bring Lebanon to a new stage of confrontation on its southern border. There is already a confrontation on that border between Hezbollah and IDF. It’s at the moment low intensity. It’s a confrontation that the lebanese army and lebanese government could do very little about. They’re largely powerless when it comes to containing this conflict. The israeli government has said that the war in Gaza has entered a new stage. What do they mean by that? And how does this assassination play into it potentially. Well, by using those words, they’re kind of communicating to Washington, because this is what Washington wanted them to do. They wanted the end of this sort of carpet bombing phase of the war in Gaza to come to an end. They wanted it to come to an end a long time ago, and for israeli troops to pull back and then concentrate on more precision strikes against Hamas leadership. It’s not clear yet whether really this new phase, as Washington wanted it, has begun. It’s still extremely violent within Gaza. There’s very little relief for the people of Gaza. So although they’ve said that, it’s not clear that it has happened or it will happen anytime soon. But the killing of Alarori suggests that this part of the new phase of trying to pick out leadership abroad outside Gaza, really has begun in earnest. Back in October, a few weeks after the Hamas attacks, we spoke to Jason Burke, the Guardian’s international security correspondent, about the risk of this conflict spreading out across the Middle east. And he said that though Hezbollah is a bigger, better equipped and more threatening force to Israel than Hamas is, they’re reluctant to be dragged into a full scale war with Israel. Will this change Hezbollah’s stance on that? I think that it is unlikely, because the reason why Hezbollah is reluctant to get into a full scale war is that they are aware that a third Israel Lebanon war would lead to israeli forces pouring into southern Lebanon, maybe pushing further and endangering Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon. And Hezbollah’s priority is to consolidate itself as a political force within Lebanon, and an all out war with Israel would threaten that. And since the 7 October, they have kept up a steady rate of fire across the border to show themselves to be a major force in the so called axis of resistance to Israel and the US, to show that they are a leading force in the region. To not have done so would have been seen in the arab world in the face of the Gaza attacks as weakness. So they are firing on israeli villages across the border. But it’s clearly a calibrated campaign to signal solidarity with Gaza without going as far as provoking an israeli attack. But that’s a very difficult balance to pull off. And as well you have what happened in Iran on Wednesday. Two bombs went off in command province and 84 people are believed to have died. So initially the president of Iran blamed Israel for the attacks, but yesterday afternoon, Islamic State claimed responsibility. What’s going on? This was a bombing clearly designed to kill mass numbers of civilians. There was one bomb at about 03:00 p.m. And then a second bomb along this escape route that people were fleeing. And it was a second bomb that killed large numbers of civilians. In a country where such incidents are rare, this is probably the worst terrorist attack Iran has suffered since the islamic revolution. It does bring a certain amount of relief to the region that the Islamic State gained responsibility and that this wasn’t going to be seen as an israeli hit because at a time like this, with everything very precarious in the region and everyone with a very itchy trigger finger, that would have been quite disastrous. So the fact that is has come forward and claimed it takes a little bit of the pressure off, but there are nevertheless many flashpoints left that bring Iran and its partners into close proximity with Israel and its principal back at the US and away from Iran. You have what’s happening in the Red Sea. Since November, Houtis, who control large parts of Yemen and who are backed by Iran and support Hamas, have been attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea that are on their way to Israel. The US has retaliated by sinking hootie boats and fighters on board. Those have died. How significant is what’s happening now in the Red Sea? That’s enormously significant. You have the US coming very close to all our conflict with the hooties. And on Wednesday, along with the eleven allies from around the world, US made a very pointed threat that OG forces, if they carried on attacking shipping in the Red Sea, would bear the consequences. And administration officials said, I don’t anticipate there’s going to be another warning. The implication being that if this carries on, if these attacks on the ship and carry on, then the US forces in the region would target Hootie facilities, Hootie headquarters, command centres in Yemen itself. And so that would be a very serious escalation between the US and a close partner of Iran. I want to understand how people in Israel are looking on this conflict escalating. Polling in Israel has suggested that people there are broadly supportive of what Netanyahu is saying. He wants from this conflict to destroy Hamas and free the remaining hostages, of whom there are thought to be more than a hundred. But he surely can’t rely on the public’s unequivocal support for this war. As more IDF soldiers are dying, as some of the hostages have died, and as this conflict seems to be spreading across the region. How do people in Israel feel about Netanyahu at the moment? Netanyahu himself is very unpopular. The latest poll said only 15% of the electorate would want him to stay on. But that is different from their support for the war, for the conflict. There seems to be stamina at the moment in the population for a wider war with the idea that it would resolve the security threats that have been hanging over Israel for so long. I think the Israelis themselves. Security establishment. The IDF is divided on the capacity of the country to carry out two front war. And you did have at the beginning of the Gaza war, those, including the defence minister Yav Galad, saying we ought to deal with Hezbollah first because Hezbollah is the big threat. It has more than 100,000 rockets pointing at us. And if it is inevitable that we are going to come into conflict with Hezbollah, then it should be at a time of our choosing and that we should take the initiative now. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vetoed that with heavy intervention from the US. But nevertheless, there is still a strong feeling in the IDF, but also in israeli society, that after October 7, Israelis can no longer tolerate living in areas where a sworn enemy is just across the fence, as it was with Hamas, with Gaza. So it is with Hezbollah in the north. And the fear that there could be an attack like that, using tunnels, using ground forces going in and killing the populations in the north, as Hamas did in the south. And so the dominant thinking within the IDF and within the israeli government is sooner or later, and probably sooner, there will be a conflict with Hezbollah. So it does seem likely that they’ll be taking on Hezbollah at least, and it will be spreading in that direction. I think it’s increasingly likely that there will be a heightened conflict with Hezbollah unless the US can step in. And what the israeli officials routinely say is, if the international community cannot solve this problem that we have on our northern border, then we will take matters into our own hands. So that does open a door for some kind of diplomatic solution. And the US and the French have been working on this. They’ve been working on this intensively, trying to work out a deal whereby Hezbollah pulls back from the israeli border. That the communities in the north of Israel aren’t under such imminent threat. So they’ve been working on a diplomatic fix they hadn’t got anywhere as of this week. And of course, the events of this week make any such peaceful solution far harder. How much of an appetite is there in Iran for a direct war with Israel, which, as you say, could draw in so many other countries? The conventional wisdom in Washington and in Israel is that Iran doesn’t want a war now. It doesn’t want an all out confrontation with Israel that they know could bring in the US and could be extremely costly and destructive for Iran. From all accounts, when Hamas leaders visited Tehran looking for greater support for their fight in Gaza in November, the Iranians turned them down and they were disappointed by that. So by all accounts, Iran doesn’t want an all out war. But of course, events can change their minds. A conflict can break out from miscalculations from either side or from both sides. So thinking about how Israel is going to continue to play this war out and who could influence them, the US is, of course, Israel’s biggest backer, both financially and in terms of military supplies. Joe Biden’s position has become, you might say, more cautionary over the months that this has been going on. How much influence does he have over Benjamin Netanyahu? How he decides to play this out? Clearly, Joe Biden and his administration have limited influence on Israel. They didn’t want the campaign in Gaza to take their form of levelling large parts of Gaza and residential areas. They have been urging Israel to change the way it conducts the war, to let more humanitarian aids in, and it just hasn’t happened. It’s clear that Netanyahu is not listening. And it shows that in the relationship between the US and Israel, political sway doesn’t just run one way. Israel can have political influence on an administration in Washington. To do something like cut off armed supplies or cut off money would be seen as such a massive step. An official described it here to me as it being thermonuclear in terms of the bilateral relationship, that it would hurt Biden politically and make him a target for attacks from the Republicans and from the pro Israel section of the Democratic Party and affect their electoral chances. So the administration has been more and more vocal in voicing its unease, but it has been very clear that ultimately its support is for Israel and that Israel is fundamentally fighting a just war. Right. So the Netanyahu government will continue to play this out in the way that they wish to. You mentioned that there are Hamas leaders in Qatar and in Turkey, how likely is it that the Israeli Defence force will go after them? I know you said that it would be more problematic than going after those in Lebanon. Israel has vowed to go after everyone in the Hamas leadership, and they’ve stated this again and again. Most recently, the head of Mossad, David Barneer, made that clear this week as saying that Israel would pursue the Hamas leadership to the end. It is more problematical in Qatar and Turkey because of their relations with the US, their relations with Israel. And so you have to imagine that if they do go after leadership there, primarily talking about Qatar, that they would be more scalpel like than a guided missile at a building. These would be up close assassinations that didn’t cause collateral damage, didn’t kill civilians. If it happened, I think the israeli calculus would be it would cause diplomatic upset, but wouldn’t seriously affect the security situation in terms of Israel and the rest of the region. Coming up, what can international leaders do to try and stop this becoming a regional conflict? You. In the meantime, we can’t really overstate the absolute destruction, the level of this crisis. More than 22 palestinian people have been killed in this conflict so far, and humanitarian aid agencies are warning that hundreds of thousands of people are starving in Gaza. Are world leaders going to be putting more pressure on the israeli government to contain or end the conflict in Gaza? Yeah, I think you’re seeing a rising tide, a belated rising tide of international pressure on Israel to reign back its military campaign. You saw, finally a Security Council resolution that wasn’t blocked by the US, but they didn’t call for an immediate cessation of hostilities, but steps towards cessation of hostilities. So these are very small steps. Overwhelmingly, the international community wants Israel to step back and for humanitarian supplies to get into Gaza. But ultimately, the one country that Israel listens to, the US, has not called for a ceasefire. It is giving Israel time to carry out his campaign against Hamas and shielding it in the international community. And as long as Biden is not calling for a ceasefire, Israel won’t feel the pressure and won’t feel the pressure to not make this into a regional war. Well, if you talk to us officials, they say this is the one achievements of Biden’s so called bear hug strategy to embrace Israel and Netanyahu himself as a way of getting inside the room in israeli policymaking and urging restraint. Us officials said that the big achievement of this was the fact that so far there hasn’t been a war with Hezbollah over the northern border. How long that can continue is an open question. They seem to have stopped a preemptive strike being carried out by the IDF on at least two occasions, one immediately after the 7 October and, according to diplomats here, a second time in December. But the question of looming war with Hezbollah hasn’t gone away. The IDF is still planning for it, and there is still political support for such a war. And there is beginning to be voices in Israel. An example was the former prime minister Naftali Bennett writing in the Wall Street Journal the other day, saying, ultimately, we know where this all comes from, our trouble with Hamas, our trouble with Hezbollah, our trouble with the hooties. It comes from Iran. Sooner or later, but preferably sooner, Israel and the US has to take this war to Iran, that our problems and the threats to our existence will not be resolved until there is this ultimate conflict with Iran that is the source of most of our troubles in the region. Julian, thank you very much for keeping us updated. Thank you. That was Julian Borger, the Guardian’s world affairs editor. It’s really worth keeping. Up with his analyses of the Israel Gaza conflict and the tensions across the Middle east, which you can, of course, find@theguardian.com. I mentioned earlier in the episode that we’d made an episode in October with Jason Burke, which gives you lots of helpful background on Hezbollah and Hamas. We’ve put a link to that in the show page on our website. You might also want to have a listen to our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America, because in today’s episode, Jonathan Friedland and Bill Kristol, who was vice chief of staff in the Bush administration, are talking through the republican candidates who are taking on Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire. Just search politics Weekly America, wherever you found this episode. And that’s it for today. I’m Hannah Moore. This episode was produced by Eli Block and Sammy Kent. Sound design was by Solomon King and the executive producer was Hummer Hali. We’ll be back with you on Monday. This is the Guardian.