Directly to Americans

On Sunday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to speaking directly to the American people.  Often when people have a grievance of some kind they avoid speaking to those directly involved and seek out the intervention of a higher authority.  In this instance the higher authority has deigned not to meet with another head of state with whom he has less-than-courteous relations, averse to having pressure of any kind, political or moral, exerted upon him.


"You have to place that red line before them now, before it's too late", Prime Minister Netanyahu urged his audience, speaking on NBC's Meet the Press program.  By so doing, he insisted the United States had the power to reduce the potential of forcing an attack on Iran's nuclear sites.  The idea being that firmness in resolve to commit to direct action take the form of a threat, one that would be well understood by the Islamic Republic of Iran; that could avert a worst-case scenario.


By mid-2013, Mr. Netanyahu insisted his listener's understand, Iran would be "90% of the way" toward its goal of having produced sufficient enriched uranium to proceed with the manufacture of a nuclear weapon.  A defining and definite 'red line' must be drawn, one that would be well understood by the Republic, that their inspiration toward nuclear weaponry is held to be intolerable by the international community.


The U.S.-Israeli gap in the dispute in acknowledging precisely how close Iran has come to achieving its goal is becoming a chasm.  The United States, with its standing military numbers, its superior technological arsenal, coupled with its geographical distance from a possible Iranian nuclear-tipped ballistic missile can enjoy a more relaxed attitude about confronting Iran than can Israel, which has been targeted for extinction by a threatening Iran, and where geographic proximity makes a strike more imminent.


American officials claim Iran has not yet decided on a nuclear "breakout", not yet having committed to the assembling of bomb components, which is, in any event, as far as they are concerned, a year into the future should they decide to proceed.  The Israeli government's timetable is far more advanced.  The Israeli Prime Minister equated the danger of Iran armed with nuclear weapons with the fury now seen across the Muslim world.


"It's the same fanaticism that you see storming your embassies today.  You want these fanatics to have nuclear weapons?"  When he was asked whether Israel, given the obdurance of the Obama administration to the red line demands, was prepared to go it alone, Mr Netanyahu responded: "We always reserve the right to act.  But I think that if we are able to co-ordinate together a common position, we increase the chances that neither one of us will have to act."


As for the Obama administration's position on the matter, it remains as it was.  The U.S. envoy to the United Nations, Susan Rice, has responded on behalf of the administration:  "We will take no option off the table to ensure that [Iran] does not acquire a nuclear weapon, including a military option."  She repeated her president's position that "they are not there yet".