Iran, as it continues to produce nuclear materials that might be used to assemble nuclear weapons, threatens to end Israel’s singular role as a nuclear-armed nation in the region, a new report states.

Those atomic weapons have helped to ensure the very survival of Israel, which is surrounded by unsupportive or outright hostile states.

While Arab or Muslim nations may look with aplomb on Iranian nuclear ambitions, willing to countenance a nuclear-armed nation, for Israel it’s a very different matter.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed that Israel should be wiped from the map, and also has said Israel soon shall cease to exist.

Aside from developing nuclear materials, Iran also is busily acquiring missiles of steadily longer ranges, aspiring to a "space program" that could mean Iranian missiles could reach New York City.

"Israel is alone in publicly characterizing a nuclear Iran as a threat to the very survival of the state" of Israel, according to the new 172-page report titled "Nuclear Programmes in the Middle East: In the Shadow of Iran" that is published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank in London, Singapore and Washington, D.C. The report was presented at a media briefing at the National Press Club.

In a chapter entitled "Israel: nuclear monopoly in danger" beginning on page 119, the report states that "a nuclear-armed Iran would erase Israel’s nuclear monopoly" in the region, which is "its most distinct strategic asset."

Israeli nuclear weapons have served "for about four decades as a kind of ultimate national insurance policy" against attack by nearby states that as a matter of official policy vow to annihilate Israel, the report noted.

Though Israel never publicly acknowledged that it possesses nuclear weapons, this is accepted as fact globally, the report observed.

The report sees Israel as possessing "an advanced and sizable arsenal" of nuclear weapons, which provide "the ultimate guarantee against the unknown." As well, the report sees Israel as possessing a submarine-launched missile, and as developing a long-range Jericho-III missile.

But despite that, Israelis now are gripped with fear, wondering whether Iran might use one or two primitive nuclear bombs to demolish their country.

"With the rise of a nuclear-capable Iran, a new generation of Israelis is reminded of their country’s vulnerability to nuclear attack, and that one or two first-generation atomic bombs could cast doubt over its future," the report states.

"The debate of the early 1960s about the fragility and instability of nuclear deterrence has resurfaced with a vengeance, giving birth to a new politics of nuclear fear" gripping Israelis, the report notes.

It is unlikely that Israelis would trust Iran to drop its nuclear program, given Iranian defiance of world opinion condemning its nuclear program, the report notes.

Instead, Iranian nuclear advancements may spur other nations in the region to decide they, too, must wield the bomb.

In assessing the nuclear capabilities of each nation in the region, the report issues a disquieting warning of the danger of a nuclear-proliferation cascade throughout the region.

It is the fear that Iran will, indeed, develop nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles that has prompted the United States to propose installing a European Missile Defense system with a radar in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland or — if the Poles don’t grant permission for that — in Lithuania. (Please see complete story in this issue.)

That European system might also be used to help defend Israel if some nation launches a missile attack.