The Israeli military said Thursday that it has confirmed that the head of Hamas' military wing, Mohammed Deif, was killed in an airstrike in Gaza in July.

Israel targeted Deif in a July 13 strike that hit a compound on the outskirts of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, but the military said for weeks it was working to determine if he died in the blast. Hamas has denied he was killed. More than 90 other people, including displaced civilians in nearby tents, were killed in the strike, Gaza health officials said at the time.

Israel's suspected killing of Hamas' political leader in the heart of Tehran, coming after a week in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised U.S. lawmakers he would continue his war against Hamas until "total victory," points to an Israeli leader ever more openly at odds with Biden administration efforts to calm the region through diplomacy.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking on an Asia trip, was left to tell reporters there that Americans had not been aware of or involved in the attack on Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, whose roles included overseeing Hamas' side in U.S.-led mediation to bring a cease-fire and release of hostages in the Gaza war.

By Asher Kaufman, University of Notre Dame

Israel's apparent assassinations of Fouad Shukur, Hezbollah's top military leader, in Beirut, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, have raised again the specter of a regional war involving regional adversaries – one that could potentially drag the United States into the fray.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to benefit domestically from the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, but the escalation it could spark may reverse the win, experts said.

On Wednesday, the Islamist Palestinian movement and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards announced that Haniyeh, 61, had been killed in Tehran in an Israeli air strike.

Israel "delivered crushing blows to all our enemies", Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, explicitly mentioning the killing of Hezbollah leader Fouad Shukur in south Beirut.

Netanyahu's televised statement on Wednesday lasted for approximately five minutes and did not make any reference to the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

An Israeli strike that killed a Hezbollah commander in Beirut and the killing of the political leader of Hamas in Tehran "don't help" regional tensions but there are no signs of an imminent wider conflict, the White House said.

"These reports over the last 24, 48 hours certainly don't help with the temperature going down," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Wednesday when asked about the attacks.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced strikes on Beirut and Tehran as a "dangerous escalation," after Israel targeted a top Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and Hamas said its political chief was killed in Iran.

"The scretary-general believes that the attacks we have seen in South Beirut and Tehran represent a dangerous escalation at a moment in which all efforts should instead be leading to a ceasefire in Gaza" and "the release of all Israeli hostages," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Two back-to-back strikes in Beirut and Tehran, both attributed to Israel and targeting high-ranking figures in Hamas and Hezbollah, have left Hezbollah and Iran in a quandary.

Analysts agree that both strikes hit too close to home to pass without a response, and were serious security breaches for Iran and Hezbollah. Calibrating that response to restore deterrence without sparking an even more damaging escalation may be the most delicate balancing act in nearly a year of teetering on the brink of a regional war.

Iran held funeral processions on Thursday with calls for revenge after the killing in Tehran of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in a strike blamed on Israel.

The Islamic republic's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh ahead of his burial in Qatar, having earlier threatened a "harsh punishment" for his killing.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday urged "all parties" in the Middle East to stop "escalatory actions" and achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, after Hamas's political leader was killed in a strike that Iran blamed on Israel.

Achieving peace "starts with a ceasefire, and to get there, it also first requires all parties to talk (and) to stop taking any escalatory actions", Blinken told reporters in Mongolia.