Iran has started producing domestically made submarines. On Thursday the Iranian defense minister, Brig. Gen. Mostafa Muhammad-Najjar, paid a visit to Iran's production line, saying the purpose of the submarines would be to defend oil pipelines in the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 40 percent of the world's oil supplies pass.

However, it has not been lost on Israel that these submarines will possess the ability to launch a choice of missiles that might very well be aimed at Israel should the country decide to follow through with its oft-repeated threats of an offensive strike on the Islamic republic.

On Wednesday Iran's Revolutionary Guards commander-in-chief, Muhammad Ali Jafari, warned Israel that Iran would hit back hard if Israel dared to carry out any strike and he added that Iran would also rely on its Shiite allies in the region to back it up.

Iran's proxies in the region include Syria, Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas even though it is Sunni Muslim.

"Our strategic calculations show that if the Zionist regime wants to make the smallest move against our interests, either independently or with America, in the shortest time all the territories under the Zionist regime's control will become unsafe," Jafari told Iran's Mehr news agency.

"That country is completely in the range of the Islamic Republic's missiles. The missile capabilities of our armed forces are such that the Zionist regime, with all its capabilities, would not be able to confront it," he added.

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps is an ideologically motivated arm of Iran's military with an independent command structure to the regular armed forces. They have their own land, sea and air units.

During his warning to Israel, Jafari added a note of caution aimed at the U.S. presence in Iraq which is particularly vulnerable to Iranian attacks and interests in the region. Jafari warned that U.S. troops could also become a potential target following any attack on Iran.

While the Jewish state is eyeing Iran's new naval capabilities warily, Israel itself has focused on strengthening its naval supremacy, following the Second Lebanon War in 2006 which saw Iranian proxy Hezbollah cripple an Israeli naval ship off the Lebanese coast.

Hezbollah's growing political clout has seen the Islamic resistance organization strengthen its presence in the Lebanese parliament with both a veto power and the ability to further insinuate its agenda on Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's coalition government.

While this has alarmed both the Americans and the Israelis in particular, the guerilla group's increased military capacity in the last few years has been of major concern to the Israeli government.

And if there is one thing that ideologically and diametrically opposed Hezbollah and Israel agree on, it is Hezbollah's growing military strength.

Israel has complained repeatedly that the Lebanese resistance group has been busily smuggling weapons through the porous Syrian-Lebanese border on a regular basis.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon last week seconded this in a report to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

Israel's concerns revolve around the fact that even prior to this, during the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah was able to practically immobilize northern and central Israel, the region's only superpower, after it fired hundreds of rockets into those areas, causing substantial casualties at the same time.

Israel for its part killed over 1,000 Lebanese, most of them civilian, and wrought massive destruction on Lebanon's infrastructure.

In a bid to add some closer regional bite to Iranian threats, Hezbollah spokesman and head of its parliamentary bloc, Muhammad Raad, also warned that if Israel attacked Iran, Israel would be on the receiving end of thousands of upgraded rockets.

"The first shot fired from the Zionist entity toward Iran will be met by a response of 11,000 rockets. This is what military leaders in the Islamic Republic have confirmed," said Raad.

And if these recent developments and the matching rhetoric failed to make the Israelis increasingly uncomfortable, Russia announced Thursday that it would be upgrading naval visits to Syrian ports.

This follows recent negotiations for the Kremlin to sell the Syrians upgraded missiles after Israel alienated Moscow, to a certain degree, with its arms sales to and training of Georgian troops who succeeded in giving Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's forces a run for their money during their dispute with Georgia.

The Russian charge 'affaires, Igor Belyaev, told reporters in Damascus his navy will make more use of Syrian ports as part of an increased Russian military presence in the Mediterranean.

"Our navy presence in the Mediterranean will increase. Russian vessels will be visiting Syria and other friendly ports more frequently," said Belyaev.

Russia relies on Syria's Tartous port as a main stopping point in the Mediterranean, although ties between the two countries have cooled since the collapse of communism, when Moscow supplied Syria with billions of dollars worth of arms.

Internet news sites reported that a Russian naval unit, including the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, docked at Tartous earlier this month.

Belyaev's announcement comes as tensions rise between Moscow and the West over Russia's role in Georgia. Syrian President Bashar Assad backed Russia's recent offensive in Georgia.