Middle East War Panic Overwrought?

Iran's military options are limited for its vow to avenge Israeli attacks, leaving Hezbollah, terrorism and assassination as likely alternatives

At Beirut’s international airport, foreigners and Lebanese alike are clamoring to find seats aboard a dwindling number of flights out of the country. In Israel,  tourists are fleeing as residents buckle down and prepare to run to their bomb shelters.  Across the Middle East, not to mention Washington and even Moscow, the expectation is growing that missiles, rockets and drones will soon be arching over not just Israel, Iran and Lebanon, but Syria, Iraq, and Yemen as well, as the region descends into a conflagration not seen since, and quite likely even more dangerous than, the 1973 Israeli-Arab War.

“The entire country is wound up like a spring, waiting for the worst,” Alan Freeman, the former vice-president of the Jerusalem Foundation, tells SpyTalk in a text from his home in Jerusalem. The wife of a former senior Israeli government official adds: “We don’t know who will attack, when, or how severe it will be….We have never, ever been in such an awful situation.”