Israeli Leader Makes Case Against Iran on U.S. TV

WASHINGTON — Having been rebuffed privately by President Obama last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [3] of Israel took to the airwaves in the United States on Sunday to warn that Iran [4] was only six or seven months from having “90 percent” of what it needed to make an atomic bomb.

Pool photograph by Gali Tibbon

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel appeared on two Sunday political shows.

 

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Mr. Netanyahu received sharp criticism at home and abroad for similar remarks last week, which were widely seen as an effort to put pressure on Mr. Obama to act more forcefully against Iran. And yet, less than two months before Election Day, he turned to the weekly platform for American politics — the Sunday morning political talk shows — to make his case more urgently and specifically than ever to a wider American audience.

He repeated his warning that the only way to stop Iran was for the United States to draw a distinct “red line” on that country’s nuclear activity and declare that crossing it would trigger military intervention. But he also offered his most explicit description to date of the level of nuclear development that he would regard as particularly dangerous: one bomb’s worth of medium-enriched uranium, a level that would take Iran close to a bomb but would still require additional work to make a weapon.

He implied that Iran would cross that line soon. “You know, they’re in the last 20 yards, and you can’t let them cross that goal line,” Mr. Netanyahu said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” displaying his familiarity with American football, another Sunday ritual here. “You can’t let them score a touchdown, because that would have unbelievable consequences, grievous consequences for the peace and security of us all, of the world really.”

Iran, which denies that it is pursuing nuclear weapons, warned on Sunday that it would retaliate across the region if it came under attack.

The warnings and threats came after a tumultuous and violent week in the Middle East, which left the Obama administration reeling at times and straining to sustain relations with two allies that have long been viewed as pillars of stability in the region, Israel and Egypt.

On several Sunday shows, Susan E. Rice, the American representative at the United Nations, sought to defend the administration’s handling of each relationship. She said that the United States cooperated closely with Israel but believed there was time for diplomacy and sanctions in the case of Iran.

In the case of Egypt, she argued against cutting the annual $1.5 billion in American assistance, an action that some have urged in the wake of the storming of the American Embassy in Cairo last week.

“We think that despite this very bumpy path we’re on and the very disturbing images we’ve seen, it’s in the United States’ fundamental interest that people have the ability to choose their own governments — that these governments be democratic and free,” Ms. Rice said on “Meet the Press.” “That’s in our long-term best interest. We need to reinforce that with our assistance.”

The protests, which were inspired by an American-made video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad, spread from Cairo to Libya, where the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed. Since then, the protests have spread to nearly two dozen countries and forced the State Department to evacuate all but emergency staff members from its embassies in Sudan and Tripoli, Libya, on Saturday, though the intensity of the demonstrations appeared to be subsiding.

Mr. Netanyahu, who also appeared on the CNN program “State of the Union” on Sunday, sought to link the violence with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, arguing that Iran’s leaders were driven by the same fanaticism that enraged the protesters. Israel has its own nuclear weapons arsenal, though it has never publicly acknowledged it.

“All the things that you see now in these mobs storming the American Embassies is what you will see with a regime that would have atomic bombs,” he said on CNN. “You can’t have such people have atomic bombs.”