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Experts View Iran's Advance toward Nuclear Weapons
(JNS) Israel Kasnett - Sima Shine - head of the Iran program at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and former head of the research and evaluation division at the Mossad - explained earlier this month that Israel is faced with three main issues with regard to Iran: the nuclear program; the fact that Iran is close to Israel's borders in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza; and Iranian cyberattacks against Israeli infrastructure and civilian entities. "The closer Iran gets to a nuclear weapon, the more temptation there is to get there," she added. Elliott Abrams, former U.S. special representative for Iran, said, "We see the behavior of Iran in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. All of this is undertaken without nuclear weapons. One therefore must ask oneself: What would Iranian behavior be like if it felt safer because it had a nuclear weapon?" He noted that it would be "destabilizing and terribly undermining of U.S. leadership and credibility if all of these pledges and promises by American presidents over the years turn out to be hollow, and it turns out they can be defied by Iran with no impact or reaction on the part of the United States." The world order "is largely based on the credibility of the U.S., and if that credibility disappears, we have a whole different world....An Iranian nuclear weapon, in the teeth of the American pledge 'this will never be permitted to happen,' would really do damage to America's interests throughout the world."