United Nations: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded Thursday that the international community impose a “red line” on Iran to stop it from enriching enough uranium for a nuclear bomb.
“The hour is getting late, very late,” Netanyahu warned, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“At this late hour, there is only one way to peacefully prevent Iran from getting atomic bombs — and that’s by placing a clear red line on Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” he declared.
“To be credible, a red line must be drawn first and foremost in one vital part of their program — on Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium.”
The Israeli leader used the world stage provided by the United Nations to present a cartoonish diagram of a bomb with three different levels on it.
Netanyahu alleged Iran is already 70 percent of the way through enriching enough uranium for a bomb, and flourished a marker pen to literally draw a red line across the diagram where he indicated the process must stop.
He was referring to Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity, a short step from the 90 percent needed for a nuclear weapon. UN inspectors said in August that Iran has produced nearly 418 pounds (190 kilograms) of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, up from 320 pounds in May.
The Islamic republic says it needs to enrich the uranium at the 20 percent level for a medical research reactor, but Israel and much of the West worry it is aimed at building a nuclear bomb.
“By next spring, by most by next summer at current enrichment rates — they will have finished the medium enrichment and moved on to the final stage,” Netanyahu said.
“From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.
“A red line should be drawn right here,” he added, drawing a thick red line across the 90 percent level of his bomb diagram for effect.
 “Faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down… Red lines don’t lead to war, red lines prevent war.”
Israel has refused to rule out military action against Iran in order to prevent it reaching a certain nuclear threshold, and has urged the international community to force Tehran to abandon its atomic quest.
Iran denies it is building a nuclear weapon and this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sneeringly dismissed the Israeli threat.
US President Barack Obama vowed in his address to the United Nations on Tuesday that he would prevent Iran from getting the bomb. But his administration has repeatedly rejected publicly imposing a specific red line on Tehran.
“At stake is the future of the world,” Netanyahu said. “Nothing could imperil our future more than an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.
He recounted a long list of “terrorist” attacks that he blamed to Iran, and warned that “given this record of Iranian aggression without nuclear weapons, just imagine this aggression with nuclear weapons.
“If their terror networks were armed with atomic bombs, who among you would feel safe in the Middle East? Who would be safe in Europe? Who would be safe in America? Who would be safe anywhere?” the Israeli leader asked.
And he warned that the international community could not rely on its own arsenals to deter Iranian aggression, denouncing Iranian leaders as religious fanatics who would be quite prepared to sacrifice their own population.
With relations between Netanyahu and Obama already viewed as frosty, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta earlier this month highlighted the policy split further when he rejected Israel’s “red lines” outright.
“The fact is, look, presidents of the United States, prime ministers of Israel or any other country — leaders of these countries don’t have, you know, a bunch of little red lines that determine their decisions,” Panetta said.
“What they have are facts that are presented to them about what a country is up to, and then they weigh what kind of action is needed to be taken in order to deal with that situation,” he told Foreign Policy magazine.
“That’s the real world. Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to try to put people in a corner.”
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