Israel Matzav

Netanyahu rips Clinton over red lines

He didn't mention her by name, but in a comment at a press conference with the Bulgarian Prime Minister on Tuesday, Prime Minister Netanyahu emphatically rejected US Secretary of State Clinton's claim that there is no need for red lines on Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said that countries that refused to set deadlines for Iran to give up its nuclear program have no right to tell Israel to hold back on taking preemptive military action to thwart the regime’s nuclear ambitions.

His comments constituted an explicit and bitter rebuttal of comments made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said on Sunday that the US will currently not set deadlines or give ultimatums regarding Tehran’s refusal to curb its nuclear program.

“The world tells Israel to wait because there is still time. And I ask: Wait for what? Until when? Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel,” Netanyahu said. “If Iran knows that there is no red line or deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it is doing today, i.e., continuing to work unhindered toward achieving a nuclear weapon.”

Netanyahu also brushed off the sanctions again.

“As of now, we can clearly say that diplomacy and sanctions have not worked. They have hit the Iranian economy but they haven’t stopped the Iranian nuclear project,” Netanyahu said. “This is a fact. Another fact is that every day Iran gets closer to a nuclear bomb.”

In the meantime, viewers of CBS's This Morning got a look into the alternate universe of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's Iran on Tuesday.

If Iran decides to make a nuclear weapon, the United States would have a little more than a year to act to stop it, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday.

"It's roughly about a year right now. A little more than a year. And so ... we think we will have the opportunity once we know that they've made that decision, take the action necessary to stop (Iran)," Panetta said on CBS's "This Morning" program.

A year? A year? The breakout time from having sufficient 20% enriched uranium to making enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon is supposed to be 4-8 weeks. Iran is three months from having enough centrifuges underground to fully populate the Fordow facility near Qom. So where does Panetta see a year?

Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, Iranian nuclear threat, Leon Panetta

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:31 PM