Nerves were shredded further on August 6th by a series of sonic booms as Israeli jets screamed across the Beirut sky shortly before a scheduled speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, the Iran-backed militia based in Lebanon. The Israeli fly-by was a warning to Hizbullah not to escalate or participate in an Iranian retaliatory attack on Israel. But Mr Nasrallah, who spoke in front of a red backdrop—a colour associated with revenge in Shia Islam—had a warning of his own. The group would respond to Israel’s assassination on July 30th of Fouad Shukr, its military commander, regardless of the consequences.