Would a nuclear Iran truly pose an existential threat to Israel?

A military exhibition displays the Shahab-3 missile under a picture of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, in 2008. (photo credit: AP/Hasan Sarbakhshian)

Netanyahu fears a second Holocaust, but even top security officials say Tehran is unlikely to use a bomb if it had one. Yet the emboldening of the ayatollahs, and a likely regional arms race, are worrying enough

(SOURCE)  It’s an oft-repeated refrain in Jerusalem: A nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel. But as world powers and Iran close in on an agreement that will almost certainly leave Tehran with the ability to enrich uranium, some have wondered whether Israel’s existence will actually be threatened.

It was on Holocaust Remembrance Day last year that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that an agreement that leaves Iran as a nuclear threshold state will bring the world “to the threshold of the abyss.”

He’s not alone. Many politicians in the US and Israel have long warned that Iran acquiring an atomic bomb is a doomsday scenario for Israel.

“I agree with Prime Minister Netanyahu that a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel,” US Senator Charles Schumer said this week. “One nuclear weapon, hurled from Iran to Israel, could end the Jewish state and could kill almost as many Jews as did Hitler.”

While significant gaps remain between Tehran and the six world powers currently negotiating over its rogue nuclear program, the Islamic Republic appears set to become a nuclear threshold state.

It is unclear whether a deal will be agreed in principle by the March 24 deadline, but Netanyahu said Wednesday that the proposal made by the so-called P5+1 to Iran won’t prevent the regime from pursuing its expressed goal of “destroying the State of Israel.” In fact, he said last week, the offer currently on the table “would enable Iran to threaten Israel’s survival.”

Netanyahu, the historian’s son, has been warning for years of Iran’s intention to create an additional Holocaust by destroying the State of Israel.