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鈥� A daily summary of global reports on security issues.

Israeli media speculation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to launch a preemptive attack against Iran kicked into high gear over the weekend.聽 But the frenzy seems to lack any basis in changes on the ground in Iran, and may simply be an effort to win over a skeptical Israeli public.

Israel has been warily eying Iran's nuclear program for many months, even as Western sanctions against Iran continue to bleed it of oil revenues.聽 But over the weekend, speculation in the Israeli media about an imminent Israeli attack on Iran reached a fever pitch.聽 "[I]t was two articles last Friday that kicked off the current storm," reports the Guardian.

Time notes that two other Israeli newspapers echoed those sentiments in their own headlines.

Mr. Netanyahu and his cabinet also spoke out strongly on Aug. 12 against the perceived threat of Iran's nuclear program.聽 The Associated Press reports that Netanyahu told his cabinet,聽"All threats directed at the Israeli home front are dwarfed by another threat, different in its magnitude and substance, and so I have repeated and shall repeat: Iran must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons."

And Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon called on the United Nations Security Council's permanent members and Germany, known collectively as the P5+1, to declare that talks to negotiate an end to Iran's uranium enrichment "have failed," reports The New York Times. Such a declaration will make 鈥渃lear that all options are on the table,鈥� including a military strike, he said.聽

But despite the common alarm in the Israeli media over the perceived Iranian threat, it isn't clear that any real event or new information has precipitated the recent flurry of articles. In an op-ed for Israeli newspaper Maariv (and translated from Hebrew by Al-Monitor), Ben Caspit聽writes that "You can all relax 鈥撀爄n the last two weeks, nothing new has happened with regard to an attack on Iran. The cabinet hasn鈥檛 convened, the defense minister hasn鈥檛 summoned the IDF general staff and no new information has been received. Everything that is known today was known two months ago."

Ynet News reports that Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, accused Israeli government officials of "stirring up overblown drama."

The Associated Press adds that "All of Israel's recently retired security chiefs oppose an attack, and several have come out swinging against Barak and Netanyahu personally. It's a shocking public rift between the political and defense establishments."聽 Some experts speculate that it is the military's distrust of Netanyahu that has spurred the prime minister to take his case to the public in an effort to build up a bulwark of support for his policy on Iran.

But Netanyahu doesn't appear to have much support in the media either, despite the flurry of headlines this weekend.聽 Haaretz writes that "during the past week alone, Netanyahu personally called two writers 鈥� one Israeli and the other American 鈥� and praised them for the articles they wrote on the Iranian issue."聽 Haaretz reporter Barak Ravid writes: