Despite the tremendous efforts that Israel invests in keeping tabs on what takes place in Iran in general and the regime’s stability specifically, the current wave of disturbances that erupted there took Israeli intelligence completely by surprise. However, much skepticism still remains in Israel’s senior intelligence branches regarding the power and intensity of the protests. A very senior Israeli security source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity Jan. 2 that “the disturbances reflect a real internal Iranian phenomenon, but our assessment is that at this stage, they do not endanger the stability of the regime.”

From the beginning of the 1990s a debate long raged at the highest levels of Israel’s security system regarding the estimated life expectancy of the ayatollah-led Iranian regime. Because Iran is viewed as Israel’s most dangerous enemy and the only one that threatens the very existence of the Jewish state in the Middle East, this debate has taken up significant volume in the security-intelligence apparatus and includes a discussion on the Iranian “clock race.’’

The Iranian “clock race’’ means a race against time, and it concerns two time clocks that advance simultaneously. One measures the time that is left until Iran achieves military nuclear capacity, while the other clock measures the time remaining until the Iranian revolution collapses and the regime of the ayatollahs falls. The person who championed the view that the Iranian regime is unstable and likely to fall in the near future as it is losing the people’s support was former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy. This view had additional supporters who felt that Israel’s goals should be to speed up the fall-of-the-regime timetable, while simultaneously slowing down Iran’s nuclear timetable. According to this view, the problem in Iran is not the nuclear bomb but the leadership. Once the Islamic Revolution disappears, the danger will disappear. When Persian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (who ruled from 1941-1979) initiated efforts to achieve nuclear capability, his efforts did not stir up opposition in Jerusalem since he was an avowed ally of Israel.

Recent years have seen the disappearance of the last of the optimists in the Israeli defense system. Vigilant expectations in Jerusalem for the fall of the Islamic regime in Tehran have dissipated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paints Iran as the ultimate demon that endangers the very existence of Israel and world peace. Thus, the prime minister created an Israeli military option for attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and attempted to persuade the entire world to join the anti-Iranian/pro-sanctions bandwagon to halt the nuclearization efforts.