Netanyahu reiterates ultimatum on Iran

Benjamin Netanyahu stubbornly ignored warnings from the White House to tone down his rhetoric on Iran, warning that Tehran would be on the brink of nuclear weapons capability in six to seven months.

Speaking on America's most popular Sunday morning news show, Meet The Press, he repeated his demand for Washington to draw a "red line" over the Iranian regime's nuclear weapons ambition. "You have to place that red line before them [Iran] now, before it's too late," he said. Earlier, Netanyahu rejected the suggestion that he is wielding the Iranian nuclear threat as a political weapon to weaken President Obama ahead of the US election.

The Israeli prime minister also emphatically denied claims made by Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, that Israel's insistence on a "red line", after which the US would guarantee to attack Iranian nuclear installations, was mere "posturing". Panetta said that "red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to try to put people in a corner".

Dismissing Panetta's analysis, he assumed a tone of long-suffering patience with his allies and their reluctance to issue Tehran with a military threat. "I started speaking about the Iranian threat 16 years ago. If I was not a lone voice then, I was one of the few, and then others joined … Now I speak about red lines for Iran. So far I am one of the few; I hope others will join," he told the Jerusalem Post paper in comments published yesterday (Sunday).

The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, meanwhile warned that "nothing will remain" of Israel if it takes military action against Tehran.