Kenneth Waltz disagrees with you, Adm. Mullen. There are two different camps when it comes to neo-realist analysis of what would come from Iran developing a nuclear weapon. Waltz thinks it would even stabilize Israel/Palestine since Iran would no longer seek the help of Hezbollah and Hamas to destabilize Israel. An interesting thought, but certainly not something I want to bet on. What’s to say that if Tehran gets a bomb, that they won’t stop sponsoring terrorism and, in fact, increase sponsoring it? Personally, I think it’s unwise to let Tehran get a weapon because that will increase the number of weapons programs in surrounding countries in order to compete with Iran. That just means there’s more nukes loose that could fall into the wrong hands. That’s bad news for any Western country, not just Israel or the United States.