Bibi warns of Iran’s nuclear leap-frogging

Israel believes Iran to be in the process of developing centrifuges that massively increase its nuclear strength, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

“Now they’re developing, as we speak, they’re developing centrifuges that are supposed to be 15 times more effective and more efficient than the centrifuges that they have today,” he told American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.

Significantly, this could speed up Iran’s progression to a nuclear bomb, which requires high-level enrichment. The more efficient centrifuges under development “will enable them to leap-frog the distance and the time from low enrichment of uranium to high enrichment,” said Netanyahu.

His comments, made to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, came just one day before the start of talks in Vienna on a permanent agreement between the West and Iran. And he used his speech to say that the West should only agree to a deal that completely strips Iran of the possibility of making nuclear weapons. “It may not be fashionable, but it’s the right thing,” he declared.

Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz echoed the Prime Minister the following day, saying that if left unchecked Iran will follow in the footsteps of the nuclear-enabled North Korea. This could prompt a nuclear “arms race” in the Middle East, he claimed.

Netanyahu criticised the West for short-sightedness regarding Iran, by focusing only on its nuclear activities and overlooking its support for Syria and for terrorism. “There is no Assad regime without Iran … Iran is supporting terrorists around the world. Iran is sending these weapons, deadly weapons to be fired on Israel’s cities, and Iran has not changed one iota its call to annihilate the Jewish State,” he said. “And yet this regime is being embraced.”

Some other Israeli politicians used their addresses to the Conference of Presidents to discuss the peace process with the Palestinians. Finance Minister Yair Lapid said that the world is losing “sympathy” and “patience” with Israel in the absence of a peace agreement. Israel, he said, needs a “divorce” from the Palestinians by way of a two-state solution.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett fought the opposing corner, insisting that “there is no occupation” because “you can’t ‘occupy’ your own home.”

NATHAN JEFFAY