While the focus of US attention is on how to craft an agreement defining Irans nuclear program, the broader issue of Irans hostility toward Israel has long been at the center of the US-Iran divide.No real reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely while Iran is seen as an implacable foe of the most important American ally in the Middle East a country derided in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution as the lesser Satan to Americas Great Satan.
Since the election of President Hassan Rouhani last summer, however, Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, havechanged the Islamic Republics discoursein a way that is making members of Israels military and intelligence establishmenttake notice, if not yet acknowledged publicly by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters in the US Congress.
The shifting rhetoric may reflect Iranian understanding of a need to soften congressional antagonism toward Tehran, as well as important changes in the Middle Eastern landscape that areincreasing the potential threat to Israelfrom al-Qaeda-linked Sunni Muslim terrorists who are mutual enemies of Israel, Western countries and Iran. Such groups are now gaining strength all around Israel, in particular in Syria, Lebanon and Egypts Sinai desert, and pose a threat to European and US interests.
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