On Jan. 18, about a month before the 2016 legislative elections in Iran, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot said, quoted by military sources on condition of anonymity, “Our eyes are fixed on election day in Iran. After that day, we will be able to attempt to understand what direction Iran is headed, what are the underlying currents in Iranian society and how these currents will influence what will be most dominant in the coming years: [Iranian] Reformists or Islamists.” Eizenkot characterized the situation with great precision: All the branches and arms of the Israeli intelligence have stretched themselves to the limit in their attempts to pinpoint, understand and analyze what will take place in Iran on Feb. 26, election day for the parliament and the Assembly of Experts.

It’s not as if anyone in Israel dared hope for a real political revolution. “No such scenario exists,” admits a high-placed Israeli security source, speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “We can’t fool ourselves into thinking that one day the ayatollah regime will simply collapse. Even the harbingers of revolt in 2009 did not arouse great hopes in the West, because the Iranian regime is still buttressed by great power and [its leaders] do not hesitate to use force to preserve their survival.” If so, what is so fascinating about what’s going on in Iran now?

Eizenkot defines the internal situation in Iran as “a battle of titans between two approaches: the hard-line [extremist] approach, headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani of the Quds Force, and the moderate, pragmatic and open approach of President Hassan Rouhani and his people. According to intelligence sources in Israel and the world, the results of this struggle will determine Iran’s image in the coming decades. There are voices in the Israeli security establishment who argue that even if Iran does change direction, it may not necessarily be due to revolution. “Even if the steering wheel of a ship changes only slightly toward a certain direction, this may lead to a change in the ship’s course after many kilometers,” said a senior Israeli intelligence source talking on condition of anonymity. “Even now we identify very interesting changes of Iranian behavior and rhetoric in certain things that are happening that are surprising all the Western observers.”

A classic example of this is the fact that Iran has withdrawn its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that fought in Syria alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah forces and returned them to Iran. Initial publicity of this trend appeared a few months ago. The information was conclusive, yet Tehran denied it. At the time, senior military sources talking on condition of anonymity verified to Al-Monitor, “At least half of the Revolutionary Guard that fought in Syria have returned to Iran’s borders.” On Feb. 28, two days after the elections, Israel’s Channel 2 Middle East analyst Ehud Yaari announced that the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard had completed their withdrawal from Syria and that, currently, no Revolutionary Guard soldiers remain fighting alongside Assad in Syria. Analysts in Israel do not deny the possibility that the decision to recall the Iranian fighters from Syria may have been influenced by the relative victory of the Reformists in the Iranian elections and the blow to the hard-liners, which strengthened the camp of President Hassan Rouhani.