JERUSALEM — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been a convenient bogeyman for Israel. So the early claim of his reelection as Iran's president brought quiet sighs of relief to many Israeli leaders, who figured it would be easier to rally Western pressure against Iran as long as the Holocaust-denying hard-liner remained in power.
Now, after more than a week of massive protests by defiant Iranians alleging electoral fraud, sentiment in Israel is shifting. Its leaders have joined the Israeli public in openly applauding the demonstrators and asking aloud whether the theocratic regime feared by the Jewish state as a threat to its existence might be crumbling.
"It is a regime whose real nature has been unmasked, and it's been unmasked by incredible acts of courage by Iran's citizens," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "They go into the streets and face bullets. . . . Something very deep, very fundamental is going on. There's an expression of a deep desire amid the people of Iran for freedom."
Speaking to a gathering of world Jewish leaders, Israeli President Shimon Peres suggested that the street protests pose a threat to Iran's suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons and to the regime.
"I don't know what will disappear first -- their enriched uranium or their poor government," he declared. "Hopefully, the poor government will disappear."
Israeli officials caution that no one can be certain how the largest outpouring of public anger in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution will play out. They say the turmoil could make it harder, at least in the short run, for the Obama administration to use diplomacy to curb Iran's nuclear program and its support for Islamic militants who attack Israel.
Netanyahu said Sunday that the U.S. and Israel should "leave all options on the table," alluding to a possible military strike on Iran.
Before Iran's June 12 election, many Israeli officials and analysts saw little difference between Ahmadinejad, who once said Israel would in time be "wiped off the map," and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, his chief rival. They viewed the two men as essentially like-minded veterans of the clerical regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.
If anything, Israeli officials have worried more about Mousavi. Because he is generally perceived as more moderate, they thought he might be able to persuade Western leaders to accept Iran's claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only -- while, in their opinion, moving quietly to build a bomb.
