Speaking yesterday at AIPAC’s 2013 Policy Conference, outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak emphasized that the Jewish state remains committed to halting Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

Noting that “we’ve stated this time and again, and we mean it,” Barak explained that “[a] nuclear Iran will be the end of any conceivable non-proliferation regime.”

President Obama has also been more explicit  in recent months in drawing a red line on Iran’s illicit nuclear pursuit making clear that his pledge to stop Iran means stopping them before Tehran reaches what the President called “breakout capacity.” Many experts, including a former top White House official dealing with Iran nuclear issues, have noted that President Obama’s long, thought-out red line is now virtually identical to what the government of Israel has identified as the need to stop Iran before it reaches “nuclear weapons capability.”

Analysts, diplomats, and Sunni leaders themselves have long noted that a nuclear Iran would risk uncontrolled proliferation across the Middle East. Iran’s Arab neighbors are known to fear that Tehran will use the immunity provided by such weapons to press its territorial claims throughout the region, which encompass among other regions the entire nation of Bahrain.

President Obama has explicitly linked the U.S.’s policy on Iran to fears of a Sunni breakout:

And what I have said is, is that we will not countenance Iran getting a nuclear weapon. My policy is not containment; my policy is to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon — because if they get a nuclear weapon that could trigger an arms race in the region, it would undermine our non-proliferation goals, it could potentially fall into the hands of terrorists.

Barak strongly hinted that if necessary Israel would act alone to degrade Iran’s nuclear program. Gesturing toward the conflict raging in Syria, where the United Nations estimates that 70,000 people have been killed, he said it’s impossible to “take it for granted” that the international community will intervene in crises.

The Israeli minister also criticized theories of “linkage” that identify the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a central source of regional instability. “If a peace deal had been signed with the Palestinians years ago, the Muslim Brotherhood would still have come to power in Egypt,” he said.