It’s been a long time since he delivered such a chilling and ominous speech at a festive occasion, the swearing-in of the 22nd Knesset on Oct. 3. A faltering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the event to make the following remarks: “We are facing an enormous security challenge, which only intensifies from week to week. It increased profoundly in the last month or two, and, in particular, in the last few weeks. This isn’t spin, it’s not a whim, this is not ‘Netanyahu trying to scare us,’” said the prime minister, as he tried — and succeeded, as usual — in terrifying the public and media alike.

He delivered this speech on the same day that Iran took the unusual step of having the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ General Intelligence Services, Hossein Taeb, announce details of an alleged “Israel-Arab plot” to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, commander of its Quds Force. Already on Oct. 1, Soleimani himself was interviewed on Iranian television about an earlier Israeli attempt to assassinate him, during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Back then, it was Israeli drones circling over Beirut’s Dahieh neighborhood, where he, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and Hezbollah senior Imad Mughniyeh were located. Mughniyeh was since killed in an operation in Damascus that the international media attributed to the Mossad in 2008. Nasrallah survived, but the Iranians claim that the attack propelled Soleimani to the No. 1 spot on Israel’s “most wanted” list. Iran claims that Soleimani was supposed to join Mughniyeh in paradise, when huge amounts of explosives blow up in a mosque named for his father, on the one-year anniversary of his father’s death.

Israel has not reacted to this. While the Iranian report is meticulously detailed, its reliability remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is the tension pervading Israel’s top political and defense leadership. Netanyahu’s remarks to the Knesset echo other past warnings. All indications are that Israel is preparing for the possibility that the “campaign between wars,” which it is waging against Iran and its subsidiaries, could develop into an all-out war along the entire front, which covers a large part of the Middle East. This could be why Netanyahu, but also Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, have been hinting at the necessity to augment the defense budget by billions of shekels, and that this must be done as soon as possible.