Estimate has dealt a temporarily fatal blow - temporary, because the legions of fear always find substitutes - to the perception of Iran as the Israelis' great enemy.

The defence and security establishment, the Israel Defence Forces, the Shin Bet and the Mossad, like every military organisation in the world, has never existed without a designated Satan: Egypt, Libya, Syria, Palestinians, Al-Qaeda, Iran. Each of these enemies has enabled the Israeli military establishment to recruit tremendous economic resources, to create panic and to make it easy for the public to forget blunders and failures. Now it is hard times for the corporation of fear and anxiety, because its glory has also passed.

The 2006 Lebanon War is still under investigation by the Winograd commission even though the interest in its report has already faded. In the south of Israel, the drizzle of primitive Qassam rockets fired by Hamas in the Gaza Strip continues. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (right), a skilled lawyer and survivor, neither a gentleman nor an