The book of Deuteronomy described the promised land as one “of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; . . . a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.” In modern times, it has seemed more like a land conspicuously lacking in the fossil fuels that have made so many nearby countries rich. A recent government-sponsored study has taken a different approach, trying to calculate the monetary value of Israel’s natural resources. Sue Surkes explains the problems involved in performing such a calculation, and how a team of scientists tried to solve it:

How, for example, does one price an acacia tree that feeds several species of wildlife, helps to bind sandy soil, interacts with subterranean fungi and bacteria, absorbs carbon dioxide, and emits oxygen during photosynthesis?

The . . . report makes a start in attaching financial value to services (at 2015 prices), focusing on those elements—such as agricultural products, but also carbon sequestration (as absorbed by the sea)—that have a known market value. It prices these at around 7.7 billion shekels ($2.4 billion at today’s prices) a year, and says that if methods were available to value all the services, the figure would probably be closer to 122 billion shekels annually ($38 billion today), equivalent to 8 percent of GDP.

Natural vegetation that feeds cows, sheep, and goats saves farmers $83.2 million per year in feed. . . . All the water within Israel’s terrestrial boundaries—streams, springs, and the Sea of Galilee—is valued at an annual $206.7 million. Agricultural crops are worth some $1 billion a year.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.