Netanyahu’s Bomb Diagram Stirs Confusion in Israel

Source: NY Times

JERUSALEM — When the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, drew his red line on a cartoonish diagram of a bomb from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, his intention was to keep it simple and illustrate in easy terms to the world the point at which Iran’s uranium enrichment program must be stopped to prevent Tehran from making the final sprint to build a nuclear weapon.

Instead, the attention-grabbing performance seems to have led to some confusion in, of all places, Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu’s bomb was divided into sections marked 70 percent and 90 percent, representing the amount of progress Iran has made, or will make, toward amassing enough enriched uranium for a bomb, Israeli officials and experts said. Mr. Netanyahu drew his red line at the 90 percent mark, suggesting that the Iranians would be 90 percent along the way — a point he asserted they will reach by next spring, or summer at the latest.

But on Friday, Israel’s leading weekend paper, Yediot Aharonot, interpreted the diagram differently, assuming that Mr. Netanyahu was referring not to progress made, but to actual percentages of uranium enrichment.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/world/middleeast/netanyahus-bomb-diagram-stirs-confusion-in-israel.html?hp&_r=0