On Feb. 3, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif astounded Israel when he said in an interview on a German TV network: “If the Palestinians are happy with the solution [an Israel-Palestinian peace deal] then nobody outside Palestine could prevent that from taking place.” Though his statement was initially mistranslated as allowing for Iranian recognition of Israel, the corrected translation is still one of the mildest statements by any Iranian official since the start of the Iranian revolution. Dubbed by Tehran the “Little Satan,” second only to the “Great Satan” — the United States — Israel is an enemy whose name has been unmentionable and whose obliteration had to be declared necessary at least once every couple of weeks.
Zarif’s statement took the Israeli media and public by surprise, but not the country’s decision-makers. In a recent closed meeting, a senior Israeli military official told Al-Monitor that a “dramatic development is taking place in Iran.” A seasoned Israeli defense official took it a step further, calling the developments in Iran “historic.”
