Ben Caspit reported from Jerusalem this week that despite the hard-line approach taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran, senior officials in Israel’s security agencies are assessing that changes in Iran could merit a re-evaluation of Iranian intentions.

“No one in the Israel Defense Forces, the military’s Intelligence Directorate, the Mossad or the Ministry of Defense plans to go dancing in the streets just yet,” Caspit writes. “However, the sounds and images coming out of Tehran are inspiring great hope among defense officials. Something real is going on there, they say, adding that this is no act.”

Caspit’s scoop on Israel’s reassessment of Iran comes amid a few high-profile international gestures, as Meir Javedanfar writes this week. Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon sat in the front row during a panel discussion involving Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 2. Javedanfar adds that Hamid Chitchiyan, Iran's minister of energy and a member of President Hassan Rouhani's cabinet, stayed at the table during a presentation by Israeli Water and Energy Minister Silvan Shalom at a conference on renewable energy in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 18-19.

“What we are witnessing could just be a temporary tactical move by the Iranian government and the regime until Iran’s problems in Syria are resolved,” Javedanfar writes, observing a possible convergence of interests over the rise of al-Qaeda-inspired and linked terrorists in Syria. “Or it may be that we are about to see a new strategy, whereby to maintain domestic support among conservatives [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei continues with his attacks against Israel and his denial of the Holocaust. But the government, to improve Iran’s standing abroad, tries to subtly send messages of goodwill while recognizing the Holocaust,” as Zarif has now done on several occasions, as reported last year by Ali Hashem and Laura Rozen.