A recent study suggesting that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was more likely than ever has excited little attention in Israel itself, even though Tehran’s uranium programme continues to be seen as an existential threat.

The Oxford Research Group published a report in July suggesting that the chances of an Israeli strike had increased, and warning that the consequences would be “sustained conflict and regional instability that would be unlikely to prevent the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran”.

The lack of reaction in Israel was down to the limited press coverage given to the report. Newspapers and internet news outlets either carried a few paragraphs of their own or used wire service reports.

Timing was also a factor. The headlines were taken up by domestic issues such as a controversial bill that would restrict the right to carry out conversions to Judaism, arguments over foreign policy between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, and a proposal by the latter to make all new citizens swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state.

Yet Iran remains as much a preoccupation as ever among Israelis.

The good relations the two countries once enjoyed ended abruptly with the 1979 Revolution, after which Iran’s new rulers put their anti-Israeli views into practice by sponsoring the Hezbollah group in Lebanon and later Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians.

Although many Israelis continue to view Iranians as a cultured and modern-minded nation, they regard the Tehran government as completely the opposite - religious extremists who should not be allowed to develop the capacity to build a doomsday weapon that they could turn on Israel.

Since coming to power in 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made himself the focus of Israeli concerns with his controversial and aggressive statements.

“I think Ahmadinejad is crazy,” Tom Shemesh, a 22-year-old waiter at a Tel Aviv cafe. “He is actually crazy and delusional, because he seems to think that if he wipes Israel off the map, Iran will become a hero to the Arab world.”

Soon after taking up office, Ahmadinejad made remarks that were widely reported as meaning Israel should be “wiped off the map”, although a more literal translation was “wiped from the pages of time”. That was bad enough, but Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had said the same thing after coming to power in 1979.

What really alarmed Israelis was a speech Ahmadinejad made at the end of 2005, in which he called the Holocaust a “myth”. For Israelis, that remark crossed a red line and the Iranian president’s imaged shifted from merely that of an enemy to that of someone hell-bent on the annihilation of their country.

“Before Ahmadinejad, Iran was not viewed as an existential danger to Israel…. That changed when he was elected,” Shemesh said.

Among Israelis, there seems to be broad support for Prime Minister Netanyahu's policy of backing the sanctions the United Nations, United States and European Union have in place against Iran.

“At the moment, the government's Iran policy is fine. There does not seem to be much else that it could be doing,” said Asaf Schverd, an electronics engineer from the town of Yahud.

Although US president Barack Obama is generally unpopular because of the perception that he wants Israel to make excessive compromises to the Palestinians, he is seen as much sounder on the question of Iran.

“I believe Israel should by all means cooperate with Obama over Iran. The US president seems to lead a very realist policy in this area,” said Assaf Rapoport, a postgraduate student in diplomacy at Tel Aviv University.

One reason for this continuing reliance on Washington is a belief that Israel would be unable to mount an attack and take out Iran’s nuclear capability without assistance from the Americans, at best, and at least their tacit approval.

For many people, the question is not whether Israel should stop Iranian developing a nuclear programme, it is how that should be done.

Rapoport echoed the concerns raised in the Oxford Research Group report about how effective even a successful strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would be.

“The best result of such an attack by Israel would probably be postponement of Iran's nuclear programme by a couple of years,” he said.