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.’’
