As rockets and missiles streaked across Lebanese and Israeli skies on Sunday, the moment people across the region lived in fear of seemed as if it might have arrived: all-out war.

But very quickly, Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah wrapped up their exchange, with both claiming victory and signaling that the fighting — for now, at least — was done.

That ambiguous result, however, revealed something: Neither Hezbollah nor its regional patron, Iran, has found a better way to respond to embarrassing Israeli strikes in a way that could both warn Israel off another attack, yet not provoke an even bigger war that could be devastating for them.

Iran’s response — if it comes — remains an unknown, and Tehran could still choose a course of action that regional observers have not predicted. But Hezbollah’s choice to stick to a limited attack is an option some regional experts now think may reflect plans from Iran, as it considers how to settle its own score with Israel.

“The Iranians keep dropping hints about striking a target with precision,” said Mohammed Ali Shabani, an Iran analyst and editor of an independent regional website, Amwaj.media. “Precision and proportion is now key to how we look at this.”

Just a few weeks ago, the region was — once again — in an extraordinarily precarious position, months after Israel launched its deadly Gaza war in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.

The latest round of Middle East brinkmanship began last month, when Israel blamed Hezbollah for a rocket that struck a soccer field and killed children in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Hezbollah denied responsibility.

Then Israel launched a retributive escalation that quickly set the entire region on edge.

On July 30, Israel struck Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, to kill one of Hezbollah’s top commanders, Fuad Shukr. Hours later, an explosion killed Hamas’s top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, where he was attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president.

The Haniyeh assassination, which both Hamas and Iran blame on Israel, was an extreme provocation for Iran’s leaders.

“If Israel can get away with killing Iranian allies in the middle of Tehran, there is no safe haven for Iranian leadership anywhere. That signal of weakness to opponents, at home and abroad, is intolerable for Iranian leaders,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. “Their dilemma was that there is no way that objective can be achieved at a low cost, and many ways in which it can backfire.”

Yet not responding, he said, is as much an existential threat as the risks of retaliation.

Part of what complicated any response for Iran was that it had already flexed its military muscle in response to an apparent Israeli strike in April that successfully targeted its embassy compound in Damascus, Syria. Back then, Tehran responded by firing a barrage of over 300 missiles and armed drones at Israel — but appeared to telegraph that attack well in advance, offering Israel and the United States an opportunity to prepare air defenses and down nearly everything that was fired.

For weeks, the concern among regional leaders and experts was less that Iran and Hezbollah wanted war, and more that their best option for a dramatic retaliation was deploying a coordinated regional show of force with other Iran-backed militant groups in Yemen and Iraq. Such a move could have resulted in a far less predictable outcome than intended by those who would have carried it out — such as hitting a site with a large number of civilians, which would have spurred Israel to jump further up the escalation ladder.

Hezbollah, which has been branded a terrorist group by Washington and is the most powerful militia supported by Iran, would have been critical to any such coordinated response.

Hezbollah’s move to act first and alone signals that option was likely ruled out, regional experts said. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said in a speech after Sunday’s attack that “people can take a breath and relax.”

For Hezbollah, risking all-out war had a high political cost: With Lebanon still reeling from a devastating economic crisis and a yearslong political vacuum, it faces intense pressure from other segments of society not to drag the country deeper into crisis. And tens of thousands of Hezbollah’s own supporters in southern Lebanon have been driven from their homes by near-daily Israeli strikes.

Hezbollah’s critics mocked the response, sharing photos of Israeli firefighters extinguishing a fire at a chicken farm that was struck. “Sayyed Hassan has set a new equation for the Zionist enemy: We will respond to the killing of every Hezbollah fighter with the killing of a chicken,” one Twitter account posted, referring to Mr. Nasrallah.

Regardless of how Hezbollah’s response is assessed in Tehran, regional diplomats pointed to several recent comments by Iranian leaders, released shortly before and after Hezbollah’s strikes, that hint at an impending, but probably targeted and limited, retaliation.

Last week, when Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, visited pilgrims who were chanting slogans to avenge Mr. Haniyeh’s death, he replied, “You will hear good news about revenge, God willing.”

Shortly after Hezbollah’s strikes, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told students at a gathering that a response “does not always mean taking up arms; rather, it means thinking correctly, speaking properly, understanding things accurately and striking the target with precision.”

Experts say, however, that these recent comments hint that Iran’s response will look less like what it did in April — though that cannot be ruled out — and more like a targeted attack.

Tehran’s main calculation is finding a response that does not risk pulling in the United States, whose warships have deployed around the region.

“The Iranians got cold feet,” said Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the former head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations. General McKenzie said that Iran would possibly retaliate by striking “a soft target” — one not heavily protected — such as an embassy or other facility in Europe, Africa or South America.

And Iranian leaders are also likely to delay any response as long as talks are ongoing to broker a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, some U.S. officials said.

Some regional experts also pointed to intense diplomatic efforts over the prospect of negotiations on lifting sanctions.

“Iran is very pragmatic and of course has been wondering how to capitalize on this” effort by Western diplomats, Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said in an interview.

Mr. Khamenei, in comments viewed as underscoring a desire to renew talks with the West, said on Tuesday that there was “no barrier” to renewing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

Mr. Shabani, the Iran analyst, said that by showing pragmatism and regularly projecting their thinking in advance, both Mr. Nasrallah and Mr. Khamenei may ironically have dulled their main edge against a nation far superior in intelligence prowess and military might.

“The problem for both Khamenei and Nasrallah is that the Israelis know they are logical now,” he said. “When you give away that you are not so unpredictable, it contributes to Israel’s escalation dominance.”

Some regional diplomats, however, acknowledge that even as Hezbollah and Iran look weaker today, there are ways in which Iran and its allies have already imposed a heavier toll on Israel.

By appearing to signal they have let the Gaza cease-fire negotiations take precedence — talks widely seen as being stymied by Mr. Netanyahu — they could find an opportunity to erode relations between Israel and its Western allies, diplomats warned. Like the Lebanese in the south, Israel’s own citizens, too, are unable to return home — and are growing increasingly frustrated with their government.

“For 75 years, we were the ones being displaced and the Israelis remained in their colonies,” Mr. Nasrallah told his followers last month. “Our homes were demolished, their colonies remained; our factories were burned, and their factories remained. Now, that has all changed.”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Senior American and Chinese officials meeting in Beijing discussed plans for a call between President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as talks between their military commanders in the region, as the two countries work to stabilize relations.

The White House said in a statement after the talks on Wednesday that the countries were “planning for a leader-level call in the coming weeks.”

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, and Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, met for nearly 11 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday along with their aides, the fifth round of negotiations in less than 18 months between the two top officials.

The Biden administration has sought to smooth over tensions with China while continuing to turn up the pressure on China by curbing its access to the U.S. economy and technology. The meetings between Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Wang, following talks between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi last November in California, are also aimed at showing that the rival powers can manage their differences.

Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Wang met at a lakefront resort in the mountains on the northern outskirts of Beijing, near the Great Wall.

One big question in the discussions is whether or when the two leaders might talk in the coming months. They are running out of time to schedule the next meeting as Mr. Biden is preparing to leave office in January.

The Chinese statement was less specific about further contacts. It said that the two countries would, “maintain high-level exchanges and communication at all levels.”

Both sides said they had agreed to a video call between their top military commanders in the region. The United States said that such a call would be held in the “near future,” but China was more noncommittal, saying that it would take place “at an appropriate time.” Admiral Dong Jun, China’s defense minister, met Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in May in Singapore.

The United States has long sought more contact between the two countries’ militaries, in the hope that improved links might reduce the risk of miscommunication in case of a future crisis. Worries about possible miscommunication or escalation during a conflict have increased as China has deployed military forces ever closer to longtime American partners in the region like Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.

But while the two sides did agree on an initial call, they did not establish the ongoing line of high-level communication between the two countries’ militaries that the Biden administration has sought. And the statements issued by both sides underlined that many other differences remain.

Each side used identical language describing the discussions as “candid, substantive, and constructive.” But the Chinese statement emphasized Beijing’s unhappiness with American export controls and its stance on Taiwan, an island democracy that China claims as its territory.

The White House statement said American officials urged China to work together to fight narcotics that end up on the streets in the United States, and raised concerns over the detention of American citizens in the country.

American officials are scheduled to hold further talks with other top officials in downtown Beijing on Thursday.

Brad Setser, a former Biden administration and Obama administration economic policy maker, said that the two countries appeared to have made more progress on security issues than on the many economic disputes that divide them. The United States has been pressing China to slow its very heavy investments lately in new factories, contending that this will cause overcapacity. China has denied that overcapacity is a problem.

“The U.S. focus has been on confidence-building measures that limit the risk of a future misunderstanding, and the U.S. certainly welcomes the coming call between ‘theater’ commanders,” Mr. Setser wrote in an email.

When newcomers to Canada, the Italian couple had discovered along Quebec’s country roads the joys of the casse-croûtes, the food shacks that lie dormant in the frozen landscape during winter and then burst to life during the all-too-short warm months.

And so on a recent afternoon, the couple, Marta Grasso and Andrea La Monaca, sat side by side at a picnic table at one of these shacks, La Mollière, a lobster roll before him and a shrimp roll for her. A large blue sky spread out behind the casse-croûte, built on a promontory over the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

“You can taste the sea,” Ms. Grasso said. “We are from Sicily, so we are used to good, fresh seafood.”

The most famous menu item of Quebec’s casse-croûtes — the dish of French fries layered with cheese curds and gravy known as poutine — has become known far beyond this French-speaking province’s borders, with restaurants as far afield as Seoul specializing in the dish.

But what about the funny-sounding pogo? Or a pinceau, sometimes spelled pinso? And the guédille, whose etymology remains obscure, even though it’s a staple of casse-croûtes?

Ms. Grasso, who now calls Montreal home, was mystified when she first encountered a guédille — a sandwich consisting of a split-top hot-dog bun stuffed with seafood salad, meat or whatever is handy — on a trip three years ago. She was immediately hooked.

Her mother also became a fan during a visit from Italy last year. “She wanted to go eat a guédille every day,” Ms. Grasso said.

Casse-croûtes can be found everywhere across Quebec, many open year round.

But in far-flung areas of the vast province — as in the small towns along the St. Lawrence River or on the Gaspé Peninsula some 600 miles northeast of Montreal — they are typically mom-and-pop operations that open and close with the seasons. The menus, displayed on the exterior walls, offer American-style fast food but with a French Canadian reinterpretation.

“Casse-croûtes are summer,” said Nicole Boulay, a local resident who was eating poutine at La Mollière, in Cap-des-Rosiers, a village that is part of the city of Gaspé. “Winters here are really long.”

Mélanie Grandmont and Pascal Noël bought La Mollière shortly after getting married in 2011, turning what had been an ice cream shop into a full-fledge casse-croûte. They kept the establishment’s name, which referred to its old-fashioned ice cream.

“It’s not written the same way, but it’s also a reference to Molière,” Mr. Noël said of the 17th-century French playwright, adding, perhaps with an overabundance of caution of what customers can expect: “We have nothing to do with Molière.”

The couple are hardly miserly in their use of local products. The strawberries and raspberries on their sundaes came from their gardens. Mr. Noël made sure to secure a steady supply of local shrimp, the small but tasty Nordic kind, whose population has dwindled with the St. Lawrence’s warming waters.

One winter, the couple came to install a new dishwasher in the shack. But a wall of snow in front blocked the entrance.

“We came back in the spring,” Ms. Grandmont said.

La Mollière stirs back to life in May. The owners spend the next five months in a trailer behind the casse-croûte, no days off.

Each casse-croûte boasts of, it seems, its own secret sauce, and the trailer is also where they safeguard the ingredients of their highly classified poutine sauce — a mix of barbecue sauce with ketchup, the recipe for which was handed down by his octogenarian grandfather.

“I prepare it in secret every morning,” Ms. Grandmont said. “I bring over the ingredients to the restaurant and then hide them back in the trailer. The recipe’s in my head.”

Every casse-croûte purports to offer something unique, which is part of the restaurants’ charm, Mr. Noël said.

Casse-croûtes are “time travel machines” in the history of Quebec and the lives of its people, according to “Moutarde Chou,” a book on the establishments.

Quebec’s casse-croûtes first flourished amid the growing prosperity after World War II, said Gwenaëlle Reyt, an expert on the history of food in Quebec at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

“Casse-croûtes emerged with the boom in cars and tourism in Quebec,” Ms. Reyt said.

Although casse-croûtes became a Quebec institution, the influence on them of American fast food and car culture was strong. Burgers and hot dogs became indispensable items.

“The casse-croûtes offered dishes that we never made at home,” said Michel Lambert, an author of several books on the history of family cooking in Quebec who worked at a casse-croûte as a teenager in the 1950s. “That’s why they were considered exotic.”

Over the decades, dishes were reinvented and reimagined inside the modest shacks. Sometimes the transformations seemed more linguistic than culinary. Isn’t a pogo really a corn dog after all? And a guédille au homard is pretty similar to a Maine lobster roll, though it could be argued that the various mutations of the guédille have made it as Québécois as poutine.

At one point, Mr. Lambert researched the sandwich’s etymology.

“I never found the origins of the word guédille,” he said. “I don’t know whether it’s French or Indigenous. Maybe one day we’ll find a historical link to one man.”

At Chez Cathy, a casse-croûte in Rivière-au-Renard, another village in Gaspé city, you can get a pinso, a reinterpretation of the club sandwich. Instead of chicken, it contains ground beef patties.

“It’s one of our popular items,” said Mario Noël, who along with his two sons owns Chez Cathy.

The casse-croûte began offering the sandwich under its longtime previous owner, whose daughter was named Cathy.

“Now many other places offer it,” though elsewhere it was usually spelled “pinceau,” said Mr. Noël, who is not related to his namesake at La Mollière.

When Mr. Noël bought Chez Cathy in 2019, the deal included a secret sauce dating back to the 1960s, as well as the restaurant’s pinso and its top-selling guédilles.

Chez Cathy’s poutine had a rocky start a couple of decades ago.

“In the beginning, they used Kraft cheese instead of cheese curds,” said Danielle Samuel, who has worked at Chez Cathy for 41 years. She shook her head.

By noon on most days, the parking lot at Chez Cathy is filled, but not all the customers were exiting their vehicles; it’s one of the few places that still serve customers by the side of their cars.

For the past nine seasons, Nathalie Dufresne has flitted from car to car, taking orders and returning with food on trays that are hung on the windows.

“The locals stay in their cars, but the tourists get out and come order at the window,” Ms. Dufresne said.

“A car!” Ms. Samuel alerted Ms. Dufresne, spotting the day’s first customer, though it was still morning, as the waitress sprinted outside.

It was Dave Mainville’s day off from his job as an electromechanical technician, and he wanted to spoil himself by starting the day with his favorite, a poutine from Chez Cathy. He had been coming for years and so had his mother, with whom he was planning to share the dish.

“Casse-croûtes are open only a short season, so you want to come as often as you can,” Mr. Mainville said. “You know you won’t be able to get a poutine at Cathy’s in the month of December.”