Israel Surrounded, Boxed in, a Sitting Duck

"A deal that enables Iran to keep and hide all its nuclear weapons know-how is a horrible deal."
"[One that]  has to be either fully fixed or fully nixed. But if you do nothing to this deal, if you keep it as is, you will end up with Iran with a nuclear arsenal in a very short time."
"If you don't violate a dangerous deal, it doesn't make it less dangerous."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
 

"When Hezbollah wins, it means that Iran has won in Lebanon. In the past, Hezbollah had to make military threats. Today, they have the state institutions."
"[There exists a realization among many Lebanese] that nothing is going to change internally because everything depends on regional dynamics."
"[Lebanon’s] military and judicial institutions is where they will now be exerting their power [reflecting Hezbollah’s political strategy based on] eliminating serious resistance [while] co-opting  [non-Shia politicians like Hariri, the Sunni prime minister, and Michel Aoun, Lebanon’s Christian president]."
"They will form a government that looks the same, but Hezbollah will be in control at the core. Today’s Sa’ad Hariri is not the Hariri who became prime minister in 2009."
"Lebanon is now very easy ground for them [the Islamic Republic of Iran] to attack or retaliate against Israel, and they want to, but they are not ready today. Today, the Israeli air strikes are hurting Iran in Lebanon, but as long as those strikes don’t jeopardize their achievements, they will let it go."
"[The] achievements [are the consolidation of Hezbollah’s power in Lebanon and that of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, along with an] uninterrupted land bridge [stretching from Iran’s borders through Syria]."
"When the Iranians have finally consolidated power in Syria, Lebanon and in Iraq, which has parliamentary elections on May 12, when they have a strong presence on the border with Israel, and when they have precision-guided missiles in place — then they will be ready."
Hanin Ghaddar —  prominent Lebanese journalist, visiting fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy 

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah addresses an April 15 election rally in the Bekaa Valley via a video link. Photo: Reuters / Aziz Taher.

The Israeli Prime Minister's argument is succinct and precise, but it fails to take into account the vicissitudes of fortune -- in Israel's instance of security, a turn of events that spell out bad, very bad fortune. Simply put, with Iran succeeding in outflanking an already-neighbourhood-vulnerable nation of a mere eight million people in an area vastly out-populating the Jewish state in which Muslim states would waste no tears of regret should Israel disappear from the Middle East map, and the hostile forces of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran are ranked and weaponized to destroy it, no nuclear weapons are required.

On the other hand, a quarry cornered is one that fights with an attitude and a strength armed by resistance to defeat by the survival imperative, becoming a formidable force to be reckoned with. It was that existential passion to defend itself and its people that led Israel's armed forces to succeed in overcoming the offensive of combined Arab armies in the past. With its superior morale and weaponry, its intelligence services and the precision response of its armed forces Israel still stands a very good chance of destroying the intentions of its enemies before they have the opportunity to destroy it.

New reported Iranian base in Syria (Photo: Fox News) 

Jabal ash Sharqi is located on the road from Damascus to the Beqaa Valley border, where most Hezbollah strongholds are located, as well as the heavy, long-range missiles and rockets the Lebanese organization has received from Iran and Syria. It’s possible the new base is supposed to serve as a sort of inventory warehouse for missiles that will be transferred to Lebanon in the event of a war with Israel.

In which case, a country like Iran which has at its grasp weapons of mass destruction whose intent is to use nuclear weapons if and when all else fails in its sacred mission to destroy a non-Muslim nation of Jews itself becomes a massive force of deliberate mass destruction on a scale that conventional weaponry does not and can not threaten. Both of these scenarios, a combined attack by vicious enemies armed with religious conviction as well as advanced war weapons, intent on Israel's destruction, and alternately the use of a nuclear weapon when the first scenario failed, are any nation's ultimate nightmare.

The still most-powerful nation on the planet has taken the measure of what the previous administration wrought in agreeing to allow Iran's ayatollahs and its Republican Guard Corps free rein to continue to develop their nuclear ambitions under guise of compliance through a clever yet transparent scheme of appearing to accede to the international community's demands to cease and desist, however temporarily. An agreement hich made no move to put a halt to the further technical development of ICBMs, flippantly etched with the proposal to destroy Israel.

Israel's Western, democratic 'friends' in the international community with the influence and the gravitas to effect measures to stop Iran's ambitions, agitate to 'respect' the agreement of conciliation toward Iran at the cost of threatening Israel's existence. None of Israel's international friends have had the experience of living under constant siege and existential threat. The current American administration may or may not refuse to sanction the horrendously flawed nuclear agreement with Iran, in which case Israel's problems will still not recede in magnitude of threat, giving only the illusion of temporary relief.

A ballistic missile is launched and tested in an undisclosed location, Iran, March 9, 2016. . (photo credit: REUTERS)