THE FANTASY OF AN IRANIAN BOMB

Iran has never had a nuclear bomb—why does Israel insist that it’s an imminent threat?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to a graphic of a bomb while discussing Iran during an address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 27, 2012. / Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.

It remains a classic moment in United Nations history. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the dignified setting of a General Assembly speech in the fall of 2012 to raise the specter of an Iranian nuclear bomb. He displayed a cartoonish drawing of what he said was an Iranian bomb with a lighted fuse on top and asked: “How much enriched uranium do you need for a bomb? And how close is Iran to getting it?” He called his crude drawing a “diagram.”