Nuclear Weapon Who Needs “Red Lines” Iran or Israel? Anybody Still Need Help?

In his September 23, 2012 speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the United States and its allies to define clear red lines for the Iranian nuclear program, emphasizing that Iran will reach the threshold at which it could manufacture a nuclear bomb by mid 2013. A deep scrutiny of the past and of present events and trends tells a different story. After Iraq’s defeat in the 1990 war in Kuwait, Israeli officials focused on the Iranian nuclear program as the main threat to Israel security. At first they alleged that Iran had bought nuclear weapon components from the former Soviet Republics. Then they put aside that argument and stressed that Iran was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, and would reach that target within a few years and requested that the U.S. and EU to do everything possible to prevent Tehran from achieving that goal. Israel had sufficient influence in the U.S. to see sanctions imposed on the Iranian oil industry in mid the 1990s.