Jerusalem and Tehran are Different Conceptual Universes

Israel and Iran are both looking forward to establishing a new regional order and neither side fears regional war. Nevertheless, the respective visions of the new regional order look completely different. Both sides envision establishing regional hegemony and removing each other from power. What is the reason for these radically different strategic conceptions? At the present time, both sides are biding their time. Tehran for its part is playing for time in pretending to negotiate in order to buy time for its nuclear weapons program. Iran is convinced that Israel will not survive a regional war and will therefore not attack Iran’s nuclear weapons program and will effectively tolerate Iran joining the nuclear club. Jerusalem for its part has a vision of establishing peace throughout the Middle East through strength and undoing all its adversaries. While the Biden administration apparently has no intention to respond with nuclear weapons to Iranian biological weapons attacks against the American homeland, Israel has an offensive nuclear weapons doctrine of responding to Iranian chemical weapons attacks against Israeli cities with Israeli nuclear strikes against Iranian targets, including most likely against the Iranian clerical capital city of Qom. America can impose a no-fly zone on Iran and provide air support to insurgents in response to Iranian biological weapons attacks against the American homeland after Israel and America destroy the Iranian nuclear weapons program. In the worst case scenario will America have to invade and liberate the entire Iran. Israel realistically envisions Median Jewry returning to affluent Israel after 27 centuries in exile while Mahdist Iran envisions Israel destroyed, the House of Saud unseated and the Khomeinist eschatological region (the Fertile Crescent and the Arabian Peninsula) under Iranian control and with that the reappearance of the Hidden Imam.