Is Israel catching up too late to a major strategic threat from Iran?

Israel is increasingly obsessed with a new strategic threat—the possibility that eventually it may have to fight a two-front, and even three-front, war against Iran and its proxies. According to Chagai Tzuriel, director general of Israel’s intelligence ministry, Iran is now negotiating with Damascus to build a base on the Mediterranean. He called Iran’s effort to build a land corridor and establish a permanent forward operating presence on the sea the “most important strategic development in the region.” All the rest, he said, was “noise.”

A corridor through Iraq that allows the Iranian regime to ship weapons and soldiers directly from Iran to proxies in Syria and Lebanon would be a strategic gain that puts Iran directly on two of Israel’s four borders…

 Although the radical Sunnis face expulsion from the “caliphate” they declared two years ago, Iran has filled the vacuum, gaining political and military ground and invaluable operational experience that Israelis fear may enable the Islamic state to soon surround the Jewish state with hostile proxies.