NETANYAHU SAYS IRAN ‘20 YARDS’ FROM A NUCLEAR WEAPON

“It’s like Timothy McVeigh walking into a shop in Oklahoma City and saying, `I’d like to tend my garden. I’d like to buy some fertilizer.’ … Come on. We know that they’re working on a weapon,” Netanyahu explained.

“You know, they’re in the last 20 yards, and you can’t let them cross that goal line,” Netanyahu said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “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.”


Netanyahu cited historical examples known to most Americans to make his case: President John F. Kennedy’s demand that the Soviets remove its missiles sites in Cuba “maybe purchased decades of peace,” Netanyahu said.  And absent a similar “red line,” then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein faced a U.S. attack in 1991 after invading Kuwait.

“Maybe that war could have been avoided,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister also pointed to America’s inability to prevent the 9/11 hijackings as proof that intelligence can fail.

Netanyahu insisted that his motivations are not political, but reflected a key sense of urgency.

“What’s guiding my statements is not the American political calendar but the Iranian nuclear calendar,” he remarked.

“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,” Netanyahu said on CNN, reiterating: “You can’t [let] such people have atomic bombs.”

The Israeli leader summarized: “I think that there’s a common interest of all Americans, of all political persuasions, to stop Iran…This is a regime that is giving vent to the worst impulses that you see right now in the Middle East.”