Netanyahu: Iran Creeping Up On ‘Red Line’

“It takes 250 kilos of 20-percent enriched uranium to manufacture a nuclear bomb. They [Iran] have gone up from 110 to 170 kilos,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister was in London for the funeral of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Referring to the red line that he drew on a diagram of a bomb at the United Nations in September, he said, “They have sort of crept up but not crossed it.”

Addressing the issue of whether Israel might act on its own, without the United States, he said: “Israel’s right to defend its existence is not subject to a traffic light. We do not need anyone to give us the right to prevent a new Holocaust.

“It is a right that we exercise if we need to,” he told the BBC.

Using the crisis generated by North Korean nuclear arms to underline the Iranian problem, Netanyahu said: “The entire world is paralyzed, shattered, destabilized by this rogue state [North Korea] that has nuclear weapons.

“Iran is many times stronger than North Korea, both in GDP and aggressive tendencies and the worldwide web of terror that they have,” Netanyahu said.

“The Middle East will become a tinderbox. The threat of Iran’s getting nuclear weapons is a direct threat to the existence of Israel, but I think that it is a supreme pivot of history. It threatens the peace of the world,” he added.

Iranian army Major General Ataollah Salehi on Thursday dismissed Israel as too small to pose a threat to Iran.

This article appeared in print on page 8 of the April 19th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.