I'm going to add (even though nobody called me on it) that the perspective that Iran is trying to maintain peace and security for the region is clearly not the common Western view.  But if you listen to U.N. security council statements made by Iran, Russia, China and other non-Western aligned countries you can start to get a feel of how the other half of the world sees Iran very differently than the West does.

There are very smart people in the West who believe Iranian leadership is trying to destroy Israel as punishment for it's past actions and would nuke it if it thought it could get away with it.  And they might be right.  I can't tell from where I'm sitting.

But the idea that Israel is just defending itself is loony-tunes.

And lesser intelligences that believe Islamists hate and want to kill all the Jews are just gullible suckers for hasbara propaganda (there are about 25k Jews living peacefullly in Iran).