Lebanon is balanced as though on an earthquake faultline right now – whatever Israel decides to do next will have massive repercussions throughout the entire region.

That’s how critical the situation is in Lebanon and the surrounding countries, as described by one seasoned Lebanese political analyst.

Khodor Taleb is also the former adviser to three different Lebanese prime ministers, so knows a thing or two about what is at stake.

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Lebanon – like the entire region – is at the crossroads and it is Israel in the driving seat over which road is travelled.

‘The situation will be totally out of control’

“I can tell you 100% that Hezbollah do not want war. The ball is in the Israeli court,” Mr Taleb told Sky News.

The militant group Hezbollah is backed by Iran and has strong ties with both the Iranian leadership and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

It is very much seen as the strongest and most powerful of Iran’s proxies which operate in multiple countries.

It is therefore potentially in the Israeli crosshairs as it considers how or whether to retaliate against Iran and its network in response to the missile and drone attacks at the weekend.

Mr Taleb is not an isolated voice in warning that an Israeli attack could tip the region into all-out war.

“It will be a huge risk for Israel because it will lead to a big war in the region,” he said.

“It will not be limited to Lebanon. It will definitely spread to Yemen and most probably to the Syrian Golan and the situation will be totally out of control of any international power,” he continued.

“It will be damaging to the whole region.”

His point: Any large-scale Israeli attack against the Lebanese Hezbollah or Iran risks drawing the entire so-called Axis of Resistance into war – and that would involve the Yemeni Houthis, the Iraqi Hezbollah and the various Syrian militias – all of which have links to Iran or Hezbollah.

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‘Revenge will end up with a bigger war’

While Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron was in Israel urging restraint, his Lebanese counterpart was telling us how he is willing him on to succeed.

“I hope the foreign ministers in Tel Aviv or in Jerusalem, wherever they are, they succeed with them [and persuade them not to retaliate]… to take it easy, and not to start a war with Iranians,” Abdullah Bou Habib told Sky News.

“And they started it,” he added. “They were hitting Iran in many Syrian areas and Iran was not retaliating but now after you hit its consulate, you can’t stop them.”

Mr Habib issued his own dire warnings to try to avert a potentially disastrous attack by Israel.

“Any kind of revenge from Israel is going to end up with a bigger war,” he said.

He blamed the inaction by the United Nations (UN) for not definitively condemning the earlier suspected Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus – viewed as the first direct assault by Israel against Iran in more than six months of war in Gaza.

“We are very worried,” the Lebanese foreign minister said.

“We pray for a ceasefire but the UN is not moving in this direction and we are left not able to do anything.”

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Asked whether, like Hezbollah, the Lebanese government welcomed the Iranian drone and missile attack against Israel, he responded: “We don’t welcome it nor do we denounce it.

“We are in a very difficult position because Israel started it. We really want peace – 90% of Lebanese really want peace.”

When questioned about just how much influence the Lebanese government has over Hezbollah, which has a powerful military wing believed to be stronger than the Lebanese army plus a political wing including elected MPs, the foreign minister was brutally frank.

“We don’t have influence with them [Hezbollah] in fighting over Israelis,” he admitted. “And when that happens, we support Hezbollah.”

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But he went on to focus on the nub of the issue: “And other countries… Syria, Jordan… also have problems because of what Israel is doing.

“The UN asked for a two-state solution in 1947, a long time ago, and this is the solution for all the problems in the Middle East.”

Without a two-state solution, he predicted, the Palestinians will never stop fighting.

‘Help us’

In Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp, which is filled with tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced from previous wars with Israel, there is not so much fear of retaliation as frustration at what they view as Western double standards.

Many mentioned to us the lack of Western condemnation of the direct attack on diplomatic soil at the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital – widely accepted to be the work of Israel, though the IDF has never confirmed its responsibility.

“Let them respond,” said political activist Ahed Bahar, referring to an Israeli response to Iran’s attack.

“The Israelis are only a tool of the Americans and take their orders from the US, UK and France,” he said.

The upheaval and high number of casualties in Gaza – caused by Israel’s response to Hamas’s attacks on Israel on 7 October – has drawn together not just Sunnis and Shi’ites in Lebanon but also many of the fractured political parties.

Kazem Hasan, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) chief in the camp, urged the British people to put more pressure on the UK government to help Palestinians.

“I tell to Britain that the struggle [in Gaza] isn’t against terrorism. It’s about Palestinian rights. We need our own state. Put right what you did wrong so many years ago and help us now.”

Lebanon is waiting on tenterhooks to see what unfolds over the coming hours, days and weeks.

Additional reporting from cameraman Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and Lebanon producer Jihad Jneid.

When the first pictures of downed Iranian rockets emerged on Sunday morning, they didn’t look real.

Even seasoned military spokesman Peter Lerner was fooled. “I thought it was fake news,” he told Sky News.

The huge black tubes littering the Dead Sea and other parts of Israel seemed too colossal to be genuine.

We had seen them on the back of trucks on parade in Tehran but not fired in anger before.

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In a military base near the coast, we were shown the fuel tank for an Emad or ‘Pillar of Strength’ missile intercepted as it entered Israeli airspace that night.

It is 11 metres long, but with a warhead the size of a small car, it would have been even bigger at launch.

It has a range of 1,000 miles, a payload of half a tonne of explosives, is accurate to 10 metres and on Saturday was fired by the dozen at Israel.

Standing next to it, suddenly the claims that Iran‘s attack was in any way a token effort or symbolic seem absurd.

If any one of those ballistic missiles had reached an Israeli population centre it would have been devastating.

Showing the rocket to journalists, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the attack would not go unpunished.

He said: “Firing 110 ballistic missiles, directly to Israel, will not get off scot-free. We will respond. In our time. In our place. The way that we will choose.”

There is reportedly intense debate in the Israeli government about how that will happen.

The government is under pressure to strike back hard and quickly, to exact a high price that will deter Iran from ever aiming such missiles at Israel again.

But others fear that could jeopardise the coalition of allies and neighbours which helped protect Israel that night.

David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel and one of its most seasoned observers of the country’s international relations, told Sky News: “There’s concern that if you hit back, you risk shattering that coalition, you potentially prompt a further Iranian response and therefore a regional war, even potentially a world war.”

There is an opportunity. A chance to build on that coalition to create real international pressure on Iran not least to stop its alleged nuclear weapons programme.

But there is jeopardy too – with a huge amount at stake.

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Some reports claim Israel’s retaliation will stop short of an all-out attack on targets inside Iran, but that is by no means certain.

The coming hours could decide if the Middle East is plunged into a widening war or not.

Iran’s ambassador to the UN has told Sky News that Israel’s promise of a significant response to Saturday’s attack is “a threat, not an action”.

Amir Saeid Iravani was speaking exclusively to Sky’s James Matthews after an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on Sunday.

The day before, his country launched more than 300 drones and missiles into Israel in response to a strike on an Iranian consular building in Syria earlier this month which killed two Iranian generals. That strike has been widely blamed on Israel.

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Israel’s war cabinet met on Sunday to discuss possible retaliation against Iran, with the country’s broadcaster Channel 12 quoting an unnamed official as vowing a “significant response”.

Mr Iravani said Israel “would know what our second retaliation would be… they understand the next one will be most decisive”.

But he said he believed a conclusion had been reached, adding: “I think there should be no military response from Israel.”

The weekend brought long-simmering tensions between the two countries to boiling point, sparking fears that the conflict could spread more widely across the Middle East region.

When asked if his country’s actions had risked escalation towards a wider war, Iranian ambassador Mr Iravani said: “It was our legitimate right to respond because they started aggression against our diplomatic premises.”

Israel managed to repel most of Iran’s weekend attack, with the help of its Iron Dome defence system and forces from the US, UK, Jordan and France.

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Ahead of Israel’s war cabinet meeting, centrist minister and war cabinet member Benny Gantz said: “We will build a regional coalition and exact the price from Iran in the fashion and timing that is right for us.”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who, like Mr Gantz, has decision-making powers in the war cabinet, also spoke of forming an alliance “against this grave threat by Iran, which is threatening to mount nuclear explosives on these missiles, which could be an extremely grave threat”.

Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons.

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Late on Sunday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres joined G7 leaders and Arab nations in calling for calm, telling the UN Security Council: “The Middle East is on the brink.

“The people of the region are confronting a real danger of a devastating full-scale conflict – now is the time to refuse and de-escalate.”

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Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood threatened additional measures at the global body to hold Iran accountable, warning: “If Iran or its proxies take actions against the United States or further action against Israel, Iran will be held responsible.”

The US has already said that, while it does not seek to escalate the conflict, it will continue to defend Israel.