Reuters/Jerusalem
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday Iran had not crossed the “red line” he set for its nuclear programme, despite an assessment to the contrary by a former Israeli intelligence chief.
At the UN in September, Netanyahu drew a red line across a cartoon bomb to illustrate the point at which he said Iran will have amassed enough uranium at 20% fissile purity to fuel one nuclear bomb if enriched further. He said then that Iran could reach that threshold by mid-2013.
Last week, Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, told a security conference in Tel Aviv that “the Iranians have crossed the red line” Netanyahu drew at the UN General Assembly.
Without referring directly to Yadlin, Netanyahu said at a meeting yesterday of his Likud-Beitenu parliamentary faction that Iran’s nuclear activities remained short of his benchmark.
“Iran is continuing with its nuclear programme. It has yet to cross the red line I presented at the UN, but it is approaching it systematically,” he said in broadcast remarks.
“It must not be allowed to cross it.”
Tehran says it is enriching uranium only for peaceful energy and medical purposes.
Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed power, has issued veiled warnings for years that it might attack Iran if international sanctions and big power diplomacy fail to curb what it regards as a drive by Tehran to develop atomic weapons.
Israel has long insisted on the need for a convincing military threat and setting clear lines beyond which Iran’s nuclear activity should not advance. It says this is the only way to persuade Iran to bow to international pressure by curbing enrichment activity and allowing unfettered UN inspections.
Germany charges four over nuclear equipment sales
German prosecutors said yesterday they had charged four men with breaching sanctions against Iran by delivering equipment for an atomic reactor that the West suspects is part of a covert nuclear weapons programme.
Three men with joint Iranian-German nationality, identified only as Kianzad Ka, Gholamali Ka and Hamid Kh, and German national Rudolf M were arrested last August in police raids involving 90 officers.
They were charged last Friday in a Hamburg court, prosecutors said.
The four are accused of having delivered special valves for a heavy water reactor in 2010 and 2011, in breach of an arms embargo and export restrictions against Iran on goods that have dual civil and military purposes.
The Islamic Republic is building a heavy water plant in Arak, central Iran, and says the plutonium it will produce is for medical research.