The subject of Iran hijacked the agenda at the recent Herzliya Conference on the balance of Israel’s national security.

Strategic and military experts from across the globe shared a deep-seated concern about Iran at the conference, Jan. 31 to Feb. 3. That concern, about Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities and the imminent threat, not just to the Middle East but also to global stability and security, was repeated by Israeli and international politicians.

Israeli President Shimon Peres set the stage for the need for global action with his references to Iranian plans for hegemony. “Walking like emperors, they believe that who controls the Middle East controls the world,” Peres said. He spoke about the moral corruption of the Iranian regime, a state whose leaders deny the Holocaust, finance terrorism and perpetrate human rights violations against their own people.

Iran is a “source of evil to the state of Israel, the security of the Arab world and to the values of the broader democratic world,” he said. He called for the widest possible coalition to impose tough economic sanctions as well as co-ordinated support for the struggle in Iran against the regime.

The sense that dealing with Iran has become the preoccupation of most international policy-makers prevailed at the conference. Several U.S. and EU policy-makers explained the rationale for concerted international action: wherever you look, you see the hand of Iranian intervention, from support for the Iraqi insurgents and Afghanistan rebels battling western troops and undermining the Pakistani regime, to the exporting of terror through their involvement with Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran’s influence also extends to the shores of the Western Hemisphere, where it had established a presence in guiding the Chavez regime in Venezuela.

The emergence of a Shia Iranian bomb would likely lead to the breakdown of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the development of a Sunni nuclear response, Peres said.

Even those countries critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians took unequivocal aim at the threat of Iran. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos said that securing Iran’s compliance with UN Security Council resolutions is a high priority, and  that diplomatically confronting Iran could bring together moderate Arab states.

Ron Asmus, a former senior State Department official, summarized the thinking about Iran at the Herzliya Conference, saying that “Iran brings everything to the forefront,” including NATO policies in defence of allies.

Retired German general Klaus Naumann, who headed NATO’s military committee from 1996 to 1999, stated that NATO’s extended deterrence would be the first provision to be put to the test by a nuclear Iran. “We have to guarantee [the security of] those who feel dominated by a nuclear Iran,” he said.

The consensus at the conference was that Iran has been accelerating its efforts to produce nuclear weapons. Expectations are that Iran will achieve the nuclear bomb threshold, including critical ignition testing, in the months ahead.

Because of Iranian longer-range ballistic missile capabilities, strong action starting with deeper sanctions must be taken by countries, including Canada, to restrict and pressure the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are the bulwark maintaining the current regime in power. Naumann said that “2,000-kilometre ballistic missiles only make sense as delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction. There is no other military value for them.”

A few experts were pessimistic and felt the invocation of deeper sanctions, even if Chinese and Russian opposition could be overcome, would be too late to stop the Iranians. The repeated majority perspective at the conference, however, was summarized by U.K. Conservative MP Baroness Neville-Jones: “The object of the policy should be to prevent a nuclear Iran from arising. Living with it is halfway to defeat,” she said.

It was left to Israeli Vice-Premier Moshe Ayalon to underscore the stark alternatives to Iran’s existential threat to Israel. Like-minded nations must act in concert to tell the Iranian regime “to choose between the bomb and survival,” he said.

For others, the ominous threat of unilateral Israeli action remained. Some experts questioned any possible effective “single strike” dismantling of the Iranian capacity, and others raised the likelihood of devastating retaliation, including against soft secondary Jewish targets in the Diaspora.

These scenarios should underscore why Iran remains the top advocacy priority for Jewish communities worldwide.

Hershell Ezrin is the CEO of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy.