Israeli PM draws line for Iran

Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS

In his most detailed plea to date for global action against Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday the world has until next summer at the latest to stop Iran before it can build a nuclear bomb.

Netanyahu flashed a diagram of a cartoonlike bomb before the U.N. General Assembly showing the progress Iran has made, saying it already has completed the first stage of uranium enrichment.

Then he pulled out a red marker and drew a line across what he said was a threshold Iran was approaching and which Israel could not tolerate — the completion of the second stage and 90 percent of the way to the uranium enrichment needed to make an atomic bomb.

“By next spring — at most, by next summer at current enrichment rates — they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” he said. “From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”

Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat, citing Iranian denials of the Holocaust, its calls for Israel’s destruction, its development of missiles capable of striking the Jewish state and its support for hostile Arab militant groups.

On Thursday, he presented his case to the world just why a nuclear- armed Iran would be a danger to many other countries as well. Casting the battle as one between modernity and the “medieval forces of radical Islam,” Netanyahu said deterrence would not work against Iran as it had with the Soviet Union.

“Deterrence worked with the Soviets, because every time the Soviets faced a choice between their ideology and their survival, they chose survival,” he said. But “militant jihadists behave very differently from secular Marxists. There were no Soviet suicide bombers. Yet Iran produces hordes of them.”

Netanyahu repeatedly has argued that time is running out to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power and that the threat of force must be considered seriously. Israeli leaders have issued a series of warnings in recent weeks suggesting that if Iran’s uranium-enrichment program continues, it may soon stage a unilateral military strike. This week, Iranian leaders suggested they may strike Israel pre- emptively if they felt threatened, stoking fears of a regional war.

President Barack Obama has vowed to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power but has rejected Netanyahu’s demands for setting an ultimatum past which the U.S. would attack. His administration has urgently sought to hold off Israeli military action, which likely would result in the U.S.’ being pulled into a conflict and cause regionwide mayhem on the eve of American elections. Netanyahu’s 2013 Israeli deadline could be interpreted as a type of concession, but Israeli officials insisted action still was needed immediately.