Netanyahu: "Credible" military threat needed to stop Iran's nuclear program
Iran has not yet crossed "the red line" in its push toward nuclear capabilities, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today, but it is "putting itself in a position" to do so "very quickly."
Addressing the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) via satellite from Jerusalem, Netanyahu warned his U.S. allies that a "clear and credible military threat" is needed to thwart Iran's nuclear enrichment program "before it's too late." Words and sanctions alone, he said, "will not stop Iran."
"Diplomacy has not worked," he said. "Iran has ignored all these offers. It's running out the clock. It has used negotiations, including the most recent ones, to buy time to press ahead with its nuclear program. So far, the sanctions have not stopped the nuclear program either."
Netanyahu spoke shortly after Vice President Joe Biden, whose "values" the prime minister praised and who said that while the administration is "not looking for war," in preventing Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon, "all options - including military force - are on the table."
Extremist groups in Syria, too, Netanyahu cautioned, such as Hezbollah and al Qaeda, are scrambling to take control of the civil war-tattered country's chemical weapons, like "a pack of hyenas feeding off a carcass, and the carcass isn't even dead yet."
