Story highlights Deadline for nuclear deal with Iran pushed back to July 7

Michael Oren: Nuclear issue is not about legacy, but our children's lives

Michael B. Oren, Israel's former ambassador to the United States and a member of the Knesset, is the author of "Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide." The views expressed are his own.

(CNN) If you scan the headlines, you may have seen that I've written a new book, "Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide." Clearly, it has touched a nerve.

This is hardly surprising. The book is out precisely when the United States looks poised to sign a nuclear deal with Iran -- a deal that is bad for Israel, bad for America and bad for the world.

For Israel, Iran's nuclear program poses not one, but several existential threats. The first and most obvious is that Iran will develop nuclear warheads and will place them atop one of the many intercontinental ballistic missiles it has built, missiles whose sole purpose is to carry such warheads. Israel, according to the "moderate" former Iranian leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is "a one-bomb country."

The second threat derives from the fact that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terror, backing attacks against Israeli civilians and Jews across five continents and in dozens of cities. If Iran acquires nuclear capabilities, so too will the terrorists, who will not need an ICBM to deliver their weapon, but only a ship container.

Lastly, but no less nightmarishly, once Iran acquires nuclear capabilities, so too will many of the countries in the Middle East, transforming an already unstable region into a nuclear powder keg.