It’s the perfect time for all the illustrious heroes to make threats. Syria is threatening to fire missiles at Tel Aviv if the United States attacks. Like a mosquito threatening to sting the elephant on whose ear it is perched, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad thinks that no one will notice that his army is shattered after a long war of attrition against the rebels. Tens of thousands of soldiers have already gone AWOL, and this army even needed Hezbollah’s help to win back the strategic town of Qusair.

Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah, is also puffing out his chest, but he is being a bit wiser about it. He has troubles of his own in Lebanon, so that if he is to avoid further criticism at home or new attacks against Hezbollah targets, he has no choice but to speak out of both sides of his mouth. On one hand, the head of the Hezbollah bloc in Lebanon’s parliament, Mohammad Raad, promised the Lebanese prime minister that Hezbollah will not open fire if Syria is attacked. It will not get Lebanon entangled in another destructive war against Israel, he declared. In fact, Hezbollah is actually increasing the number of troops stationed in southern Lebanon. If Tehran demands that Hezbollah respond, it will have no choice but to comply.

Meanwhile, the Iranians are issuing vociferous threats of their own. Chief of Staff Hassan Firouzabadi has promised that any attack on Syria would cause “big problems for America’s allies.” Firouzabadi thinks that everyone has forgotten the effect that sanctions have had on Iran, and that an Iranian attack on Israeli and American targets or the launching of a regional war, as he has threatened to do, would result in a devastating blow to his country’s nuclear project.

The most ridiculous threat of all comes from the Gaza Strip. It is not from Hamas, which is still licking its wounds as a result of the severe blow suffered by the Muslim Brotherhood, but from the Islamic Jihad movement, whose spokespeople told Hazem Balousha, Al-Monitor’s reporter in the Palestinian territories, that “up until now, there has been no decision within Islamic Jihad to bomb Israel in response to an aggression on Syria. But that may happen in one circumstance: if Israel joins that war as a principal party.”