article_snippet: (CNN)In September 2002, then-former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a U.S. congressional committee "there is absolutely no question whatsoever" that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was developing nuclear weapons at "portable manufacturing sites of mass death.
article_snippet: Once Saddam Hussein's had nuclear weapons, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned, "the terror network will have nuclear weapons," placing "the security of the entire world at risk.
article_snippet: " Fast forward to this week, and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was back, this time as prime minister, to make virtually identical claims about Iran.
article_snippet: Yet not only has the U.S. intelligence community disagreed with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assessment of Iranian nuclear intentions, so does Israel's, according to leaked documents.
article_snippet: Indeed, more than 200 retired security officers have publicly criticized former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a danger to Israel's security.
article_snippet: Sadly, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's presentation reinforces caricatures regularly advanced by American and Gulf Arab pundits -- caricatures of Iran as aspiring Middle Eastern hegemon, bent on overthrowing an otherwise stable regional order.
article_snippet: The reality is that Israel's concern about Iranian nuclearization is not that Tehran will use (at the moment nonexistent) nuclear weapons against a nuclear-armed Israel.
article_snippet: Instead, as then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak explained in 2012, it is that a nuclear Iran would "restrict our range of operations.