When on Dec. 8 Israeli President Shimon Peres said, “Iran is not an enemy,” it did not go unnoticed. On the one hand, this stance was not surprising for a person who has long sought to portray himself as having a project for Middle East peace based on economic development and cooperation between countries. Peres did not come from the military’s ranks and he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiations with the Palestinians that led to the Oslo agreement. On the other hand, Peres’ move was politically shrewd because it called for an Iranian response.

Peres matched President Hassan Rouhani’s openness with a similar openness, distinguishing himself from Israel's far right wing and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, on Nov. 24, described the US-Iran agreement as, "not a historic agreement, but a historic mistake." Netanyahu attacked Rouhani from the podium at the UN General Assembly and described Rouhani as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

It is, of course, possible that Peres' words were coordinated with Netanyahu, probably because they both understand that the campaign of skepticism and rejection waged against the US-Iranian agreement by Israel not only risks harming Israel’s strategic relations with the United States, but also portrays Iran as a positive and cooperative partner and Israel as closed-minded and spoiled.

How will Iran’s hard-liners, represented by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and its moderate wing, represented by Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, respond to Peres’ move? Today, the ball may be in Hezbollah’s court, given that the group is the military arm of the Revolutionary Guards along Israel’s borders. Hezbollah, which built its ideology on ​​absolute hostility to Israel, has two bad options.