Israel skeptical new Iran president can ease tensions

USA TODAY — The election of a new president in Iran and news that U.S. plans to provide weapons to Syrian rebels preoccupied Israeli officials and analysis this weekend.

During his Sunday cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said world leaders should not to be lulled into complacency after Iran elected Hasan Rowhani, a cleric widely perceived as more moderate than outgoing President Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Let us not delude ourselves," Netanyahu said. "The international community must not become caught up in wishes and be tempted to relax the pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program."

Although Rowhani was the candidate least tied to the current regime, he "still defines the state of Israel as 'the great Zionist Satan,' " Netanyahu said. In addition, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not its president, determines nuclear policy, the prime minister added.

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Netanyahu reiterated that if Iran continues to develop its nuclear weapons capability, "the answer needs to be clear: to stop it by any means."

The Obama administration has warned against a pre-emptive Israeli airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities, fearing that such an attack would unleash an all-out war in the volatile Middle East.

"I don't think there's a need to be concerned about an imminent Israeli attack," said Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center in Hezliya.

Spyer called Netanyahu's warning "a pre-emptive statement" to the expected international calls for engaging a "more moderate" Iran, he said.

New president or not, "if Iran was dangerous before the election, it's still dangerous. The presidency is a largely symbolic position. Rowhani won't be making policy," Spyer said.

If Iranian unconventional weapons are at the top of Israel's worry list, the Syrian civil war is a close second, and news that the U.S. plans to arm rebels fighting against President Bashar Assad's regime has raised even more fear in some quarters.

Spyer said that many Israelis would like to see Assad's brutal regime, which is backed by Iran and Hezbollah, toppled. However, others fear that if the rebels — some with ties to Islamic extremists — overthrow the government, they will gain control of Syria's military and chemical weapons.

Aviv Oreg, a former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer with an expertise in jihadist movements, said the Obama administration felt it had no choice but to intercede after it determined Assad's government used chemical weapons against its own people.

The challenge now, Oreg said, is for the administration to steer the weapons to those groups with the same goal at the U.S.: a better, democratic future for the Syrian people.

While all rebels are united in their desire to overthrow Assad, there is a spectrum of 20 different groups from the Free Syrian Army, which has national-democratic goals to groups linked to al-Qaeda, Oreg said.

"It will be hard to predict whether the weapons will stay in the right hands," he said.