While the focus of US attention is on how to craft an agreement defining Iran�s nuclear program, the broader issue of Iran�s 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 America�s �Great Satan.�

Since the election of President Hassan Rouhani last summer, however, Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have�changed the Islamic Republic�s discourse�in a way that is making members of Israel�s military and intelligence establishment�take 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 are�increasing the potential threat to Israel�from 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 Egypt�s Sinai desert, and pose a threat to European and US interests.

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