Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has renewed his demand that the US set out clear “red lines” for Iran over its nuclear program, in remarks likely to put further strain on his relationship with US President Barack Obama in the run-up to the US presidential election.
In interviews on US television networks to mark the Jewish new year, Netanyahu repeated his call for the US to clarify the point at which it would take military action rather than allow the Iranian nuclear program to advance.
“You have to place that red line before them now, before it’s too late,” Netanyahu told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
Iran will be on the brink of nuclear weapons capability by next spring, he added.
He also sought to link Iran’s nuclear program to the murder of the US ambassador to Libya.
“Iran is guided by a leadership with an unbelievable fanaticism. It’s the same fanaticism that you see storming your embassies today. You want these fanatics to have nuclear weapons?” he said.
Both US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta have dismissed Netanyahu’s demand for clear red lines. In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, Panetta accused Netanyahu of trying to force the US into a corner.
“The fact is ... presidents of the United States, prime ministers of Israel or any other country ... don’t have, you know, a bunch of little red lines that determine their decisions,” he said. “What they have are facts that are presented to them about what a country is up to, and then they weigh what kind of action is needed in order to deal with that situation. I mean, that’s the real world. Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to try to put people in a corner.”
Last week, Clinton bluntly told Bloomberg Radio: “We’re not setting deadlines.”
The row deepened when Israeli officials claimed that Obama had declined to meet Netanyahu when he visits the US toward the end of this month, characterizing the move as a deliberate snub. White House officials played down the matter.
However, there are suspicions in Washington that Netanyahu is trying to use the US election as leverage to bounce Obama into taking a more hawkish line on Iran. Netanyahu has failed to conceal his preference for Obama’s rival, Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who has hinted that he would push for military action against Iran. Romney’s chief bankroller, Sheldon Adelson, is also a staunch supporter of the Israeli prime minister.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver