[Photo from TwitPic user brl85.]

The hundreds of thousands of protesters marching in the streets of Iran demanding democratic accountability are an inspiring image. They are young, courageous and determined. This is Tehran’s Spring. One says in that in the hope that unlike Prague Spring, this will bring about change.

Ahmadinejad has never looked more repulsive as he appears indifferent to the protesters and instead basks in what he probably knows is a illegitimate victory.

But Ahmadinejad is no longer the public face of Iran. Since his grotesque Holocaust made world headlines, Iran has been demonized and marginalized to the image of this extremists.

But now the public image of Iran is the young students marching in the streets: liberal, vibrant, strong. Iran’s image is now no longer the image of one man. Ahmadinejad is a side-show. The students now are filling up television images around the world. This is the image of Iran being broadcast to the rest of the world. The clashes between repressive police and fearless students has cemented in the eyes of the world an image of Iran as a rich civil society that isn’t much different than most places in the world.

This isn’t good for Israel. Israel, particularly the far-right which is now in power, has invested in an image of Iran as a Third Reich menace to world. Israel’s Prime Minister has referred to Iran as Germany circa 1939. Neo-conservatives in American and Israel’s hoping for war were publicly rooting for an Ahmadinejad victory because they consider his admittedly vile rhetoric to be advantageous to their efforts to secure international backing for an Israeli attack. Netanyahu has already strongly hinted that Israel will strike Iranian nuclear sites suspects of producing uranium for an eventual bomb.

Netanyahu wanted his bogeyman. He got him, but now that person is an afterthought. Israel has relied on dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs to justify its crimes. It whines about Iran’s effort to dominate the Middle East, but that is just what Israel wants: military and nuclear hegemony. Iran has never instigated a war with its neighbors. In its 61 years, Israel, in contrast, attacked the following countries: Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, Tunisia and in 1973 it downed a Libyan civilian airliner. Who’s the regional threat? Israel wanted to dehumanize Iranians, it has failed.

The country may still bomb Iran, but that would just make it more of an international pariah while also probably failing in its goal to stop uranium enrichment.