In 1998 I remember Clinton taking a load of flack for bombing Al Qaeda in North Africa as commentators said he was having a Wag the Dog moment and Bin Laden was just a figment of the imagination.

And here we have Netanyahu telling it as it is about Iran and we are supposed to laugh? Well, in a few years time when we are trying to get used to the actions of a nuclear Iran I’m sure we’ll still be laughing at Netanyahu but this time saying: “This is the sucker who knew what was coming his way and still didn’t do anything to stop it”!

I’m pretty sure that Netanyahu has been angrily claiming that Iran was only a year or two from getting nukes since, what, 1992?

Still, I suppose it’s possible he’s right this time. Just because he was wrong in 1992; wrong in 1993; wrong in 1994; wrong in 1995; wrong in 1996; wrong in 1997; wrong in 1998; wrong in 1999; wrong in 2000; wrong in 2001; wrong in 2002; wrong in 2003; wrong in 2004; wrong in 2005; wrong in 2006; wrong in 2007; wrong in 2008; wrong in 2009; wrong in 2010 and wrong in 2011 doesn’t mean we should automatically assume that he’s wrong in 2012.

Hell, maybe he’s right this time! This also has the benefit that the more he talks up Iran’s supposed nukes, the less time he has to spend answering uncomfortable questions about the Palestinians, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

Kojak:

And here we have Netanyahu telling it as it is about Iran and we are supposed to laugh?

From the point of view of presentation, do you think his case is more convincing because he delivered it in the manner of a primary school teacher to a particularly dim class of six year-olds? Or he can spell better than Glenn Beck? Or did his PowerPoint version crash just before he was due to give his speech?

Secondly, from a science point of view, someone really ought to tell Netanyahu that you can’t trigger a nuclear weapon by lighting a fuse with a match. Or he really ought to hope that any Iranian bomb ‘works’ on that basis, assuming the Iranians can get close enough to Israel to throw it at them.

And incidentally, I’d like to see his diagram of exactly how Israel is going to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but since that probably involves a cartoon map of Iran with a load of cartoon planes with cartoon bombs and missiles going ‘BOOM!’ on what he terms ‘credible targets’ maybe he decided to leave it at home.

PS: Of course, dear Bibi could have said – in the best Blue Peter tradition – ‘Here’s a bomb we prepared earlier’, but officially Israel doesn’t have any nuclear weapons.

So has the count down to the start of WW3 begun?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPuhW0b39K4&feature=related

@1

An excellent point I think. The anti-Zionist (and anti-American) prejudices have blinded many to the potentially catastrophic consequences of a nuclear armed Iran. At the very least it unleashes the mother of all arms race in one of the worlds most unstable regions. It will be a spectacle not seen since the Cold War. If Iran does this there will definately be a Sunni bomb. Quite possibly more than one.

@2

You know Iran is making a bomb. Why pretend otherwise? Just be honest and admit you admit you actually want Iran to succeed in its illegal endeavours. You might even think a nuclear armed Iran will swing the balance of power in favour of Hamas and the Palestinians or something? Or is the logic even more stupid? Anything the Americans don’t like must be great?

@ tory

I don’t think flyingrodent needs to explain the “logic” of a position you just made up.

[5] steps to war.

1 demonise the enemy
2 exaggerate the threat
3 fake diplomatic effort
4 manufacture pretext

Remember the phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ ?

I couldn’t care less about Iran and I wouldn’t believe the Israeli government if they told me water was wet.

I think Chris has more or less finished this debate with his highly accurate points. Well done, that lad.

I saw Netanyahu repeat his ‘wipe Israel off the face of the map” lie on CNN’s State of the Union recently. He was not challenged by his interviewer. And I heard Barack Obama come up with a variant on it just the other day.

Israel’s Deputy PM, Dan Meridor, admitted the claim was false in an Al Jazeera interview in April this year.

Chris,

Thanks for sharing your insight into this conversation. Most interesting.

Flyingrodent,

Yes it’s been going on for a long time. As far as I’m aware nuclear bombs are not like the things they made with sticky backed plastic on Blue Peter and gestation to manufacture takes a long long time.

Redpesto,

The presentation was incredibly simplistic as if he was talking to a bunch or cretins because that’s how the UN behaves. Credit the man with a sense of humour, please.

Ex Labour Voter,

Could you tell me why Ahmedinejad hasn’t sought to correct this gross misrepresentation of what he said and what he meant? No – because it’s the impression he sought to create.

What Netanyahu did was to extend the supposed deadline for military action against Iran until after the US Presidential election on 6 November. Mewanwhile, the ethnic cleansing of Jerulsalem and the illegal settlement building on occupied Palestinian lands continue.

Kojak:

The presentation was incredibly simplistic as if he was talking to a bunch or cretins because that’s how the UN behaves. Credit the man with a sense of humour, please.

Ah, so we were supposed to be laughing, but at the UN rather than at Netanyahu. Oh my sides. And then the UN, having been treated like ‘a bunch of cretins’, is meant to sign off on whatever Israel/the US/anyone else who’s up for it wants to ‘do about Iran’ (which in Bibi-speak seems to be ‘bomb the fuck out of it’). Somehow I don’t think Netanyahu will be supporting Woody Allen on a tour of the ‘borscht belt’ anytime soon.

Redpesto,

The UN is not supposed to sign off on Israel / US or whoever wants to do something about Iran. It was being told how things are and what will happen so they can’t say you didn’t warn us.

As Netanyahu walks in the door all the Arab nations and Iran walk out in protest. If you don’t think that 6 decades of that charade is cretinous behavior I’m not sure what is other than the failure of the UN itself to tell them to stop pissing around and try and sort the dispute. But that presupposes these nations want to resolve the dispute in the first place – which in itself might be foolish given the weight of evidence to the contrary.

Kojak:

Meanwhile, the sanctions appear to be working:

Sanctions against the Iranian regime are pushing the Islamic Republic’s economy into deep crisis, according to key Israeli officials in comments seen as a further indication unilateral military action may have been put on hold.

The Iranian rial fell 5% to an all-time low against the US dollar on Saturday, according to financial websites. The value of the rial has fallen by almost 57% since June last year, leading to big price increases for imported goods.

Israel’s finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, said Iran’s economy “is not collapsing, but it is on the verge of collapse”. The loss of oil revenue would approach $45bn-$50bn (£28bn-£31bn) by the end of the year, he told Israel Radio. “The Iranians are in great economic difficulties as a result of the sanctions.”

His comments followed the leak last week of an internal foreign ministry report, which said international sanctions were having a profound effect on Iran’s economy and could be destabilising the government. But the measures had yet to persuade the regime to abandon its nuclear programme and, therefore, additional sanctions were needed.

Plus, the state of flux in the Middle East (the Sunni/Shia divide, post-Mubarak Egypt, Syria) means things are a bit complicated at the moment.