Using a cartoon on a poster board to make his point, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations today that he believed Iran would have the capability to make a nuclear weapon by next spring or summer unless the Iranians are ordered to stop their progress before then.
Netanyahu used most of his speech to warn the rest of the world that there was an urgency to stopping Iran’s enrichment of nuclear fuel. Netanyahu also seemed intent on making nice with the United States, after previously appearing to be annoyed with the Obama administration’s insistence on trying to use diplomatic pressure on Iran.
In his own speech to the U.N. on Tuesday, President Obama refused to issue a “red line” threat to Iran that it couldn’t cross without risking American military intervention. But the president did acknowledge that the space to allow diplomacy to work “was not unlimited.”
“America wants to resolve this issue through diplomacy, and we believe there is still time and space to do so,” Obama said. “We respect the right of nations to access peaceful nuclear power, but one of the purposes of the United Nations is to see that we harness that power for peace.”
Netanyahu took the time today to thank Obama for his speech.
He also held up a prop—a drawing of an atomic bomb with a fuse. Netanyahu drew a red line through the level where Iran would have amassed enough enriched uranium to make a bomb, which he said would happen in the spring or summer of 2013.
“The relevant question is not when Iran will get the bomb,” he said. “It is at what stage can we stop Iran from getting the bomb.”
Yesterday, in a U.N. speech that was boycotted by the delegations from the U.S. and Israel, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn’t say one word about the Iranian nuclear weapons program. But the volatile Iranian leader talked plenty about the politics of U.S. and Israel, who he called “uncivilized Zionists.”
Ahmadinejad said that letting just five nations—the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France—have veto power in the U.N. Security Council was not acceptable.
“The current abysmal situations of the world are due mainly to the wrong leadership of the world who have entrusted themselves to the devil,” he said, referring to America’s commanding position in world affairs.
He maligned the U.S. presidential election for spending ” hundreds of millions on election campaigns” and not listening to the “will and views of the masses.”
“In the United States and in Europe their voices are not heard even if they constitute 99 percent of the societies,” he said. “Human and ethical values are sacrificed in order to win worlds.”