NEW YORK, August 16. /TASS/. The Israeli authorities headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intend to drag the US into an open confrontation with Iran, Hamas official Basem Naim said.

"He [Netanyahu] is trying to achieve through this opportunity that came to him the ambitious goal that he has been seeking for 20 years, dragging the United States of America to fight with him in a battle of aggression against Iran," he told Newsweek magazine. Naim estimates that Israel intends to continue the conflict in the Gaza Strip until the upcoming US presidential election in November, expecting that the new US administration will be more inclined to support the Jewish state in the confrontation.

Tensions in the Middle East flared up again after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and the killing of Fuad Shukr, a top commander of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah movement, in Beirut. Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah blamed the killings on Israel, vowing to take revenge. The Israeli authorities did not comment on Haniyeh’s death, while calling Shukr’s assassination a response to an attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights, which had killed 12 people. Hezbollah denies involvement in the incident.