The history of Netanyahu’s rhetoric on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

 Truth has a quiet strength that no deception can ever truly overpower.

Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has warned of an imminent threat from an Iranian nuclear bomb for more than 30 years.

Benjamin Netanyahu shows an illustration as he describes his concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions 

during 

his address to the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters on 

September 27, 2012.

For more than three decades, a familiar refrain has echoed from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.

Since 1992, when Netanyahu addressed Israel’s Knesset as an MP, he has consistently claimed that Tehran is only years away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. “Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb,” he declared at the time. The prediction was later repeated in his 1995 book, Fighting Terrorism.

The sense of imminent threat has repeatedly shaped Netanyahu’s engagement with United States officials. In 2002, he appeared before a US congressional committee, advocating for the invasion of Iraq and suggesting that both Iraq and Iran were racing to obtain nuclear weapons. The US-led invasion of Iraq followed soon after, but no weapons of mass destruction were found.

In 2009, a US State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed him telling members of Congress that Iran was just one or two years away from nuclear capability.

Three years later, at the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu famously brandished a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate his claims that Iran was closer than ever to the nuclear threshold. “By next spring, at most by next summer … they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” he said in 2012.

Now, more than 30 years after his first warning, Israel has conducted attacks against Iran while Netanyahu maintains that the threat remains urgent. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” he argued recently, suggesting the timeline could be months, even weeks.

NOTE:

These assertions persist despite statements from the US Director of National Intelligence earlier this year saying Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.

For Netanyahu, the message has scarcely changed in decades — a warning that appears to transcend shifting intelligence assessments and diplomatic developments.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the joint session of US Congress on July 10, 1996, at the Capitol in Washington, DC. Netanyahu called on Europe and Asia to join efforts to isolate Iran and Iraq and prevent them from developing nuclear capabilities that he warned would bring catastrophe.

Netanyahu (L) and his Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon (R) are welcomed by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov (C) during their meeting in the Foreign Ministry office, Moscow, Russia, March 22, 1999. Netanyahu was in Moscow to hold talks that touched on the issue of the transfer of Russian nuclear technology to Iran.

Netanyahu addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in Washington, DC, on March 4, 2014. He urged world powers not to allow Iran to retain the ability to enrich uranium, saying it must be stripped of all nuclear technologies with bomb-making potential.

Netanyahu speaks about Iran during a joint meeting of the US Congress in the House chamber at the US Capitol on March 3, 2015 in Washington, DC.

Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress on the floor of the US House of Representatives in the US Capitol on March 3, 2015.