The Second Temple was built in Jerusalem by returnees from Babylonian exile around 516 BCE. Some 500 years later, King Herod undertook a program of large-scale renovations and expansions, which included the still-standing Western Wall. As part of a series of depictions of the Mount throughout ancient times, the archaeologist Leen Ritmeyer has created drawings of the results. He writes:

Herod extended the Hasmonean Temple Mount in three directions: north, west, and south. At the northwest corner he built the Antonia Fortress and in the south, the magnificent Royal Stoa. In 19 BCE [he] began the most ambitious building project of his life, the rebuilding of the Temple and the Temple Mount in lavish style. . . . Today’s Temple Mount boundaries still reflect this enlargement.

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.