Netanyahu's Nuclear Alarm

A Strategic Diversion?

For over thirty years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly warned the world that Iran is mere moments away from building a nuclear bomb. These warnings have become almost ritualistically urgent, apocalyptic, and impeccably timed. While the global media often takes these pronouncements at face value, a deeper investigation reveals a more cynical reality: Netanyahu's most dire warnings about Iran have frequently coincided with international condemnation of Israel's actions, particularly in Gaza and the West Bank. In many instances, these nuclear alarms appear less like genuine security alerts and more like political smokescreens designed to deflect attention, redirect pressure, and reframe Israel as the besieged rather than the aggressor.

In early 1992, Netanyahu, then a rising Likud politician, told the Israeli public that Iran was “three to five years away” from acquiring a nuclear weapon. That same year, Israel came under fire from the United Nations Security Council for deporting Palestinians from the occupied territories. Resolutions 726 and 799, issued in January and December, respectively, condemned Israel’s actions. Netanyahu’s statement, therefore, arrived conveniently between two waves of international censure. While the global press reported his Iranian concerns with gravity, little attention was paid to the fact that Israel was forcibly expelling people from their homes.

Fast forward to 2007, when Netanyahu, then leader of the opposition, began invoking historical analogies that bordered on the theatrical. “It’s 1938, and Iran is Germany,” he said in March, casting himself in the role of a Churchillian prophet. Just three months later, Hamas seized control of Gaza, and Israel responded with a sweeping blockade that isolated two million people from food, fuel, and medicine. In 2008, Israel’s air force pounded Gaza in retaliatory strikes, while international organisations, including the UN Human Rights Council condemned Israel’s actions. The UN also extended the mandate of its Golan monitoring force during that time. Through it all, Netanyahu maintained his focus on Tehran, allowing the spectre of a nuclear Iran to dominate headlines while images of Gaza’s rubble faded.

By January 2009, Netanyahu just weeks away from reclaiming the premiership, stated that Iran posed “the gravest threat to our existence since independence.” This proclamation came on the same day that the United Nations passed Resolution 1860, which demanded a ceasefire to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. With over 1,000 Palestinians killed, including hundreds of civilians, Israel faced mounting pressure. Netanyahu’s rhetoric once again worked to shift the focus from the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces to the hypothetical future of an Iranian bomb.

In September 2012, now Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly wielding a cartoon bomb diagram. Pointing dramatically at a red line he drew on the illustration, he claimed Iran would have enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb by the following summer. Just weeks later, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defence in Gaza. Although no formal UN resolution was passed that year against Israel, the world watched in horror as images of Israeli missiles hitting densely populated civilian areas were broadcast globally. Once again, Netanyahu’s nuclear warning arrived just in time to reframe the public narrative.

March 2015 saw one of Netanyahu’s most overt political interventions: a speech before the US Congress in which he argued that the impending Iran nuclear deal would trigger a Middle East arms race. The timing was remarkable. Settlement construction in the West Bank was peaking, and growing international outrage was evident. While no new UN Security Council resolution was issued that month, the period marked the beginning of a sharp increase in UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council criticism of Israel. Between 2015 and 2025, over 140 resolutions would be passed against Israel, compared to only 15 concerning Iran. Netanyahu’s speech was a masterstroke of media redirection.

In 2023, Netanyahu returned to his old script. In January, he accused Iran of being “responsible for 90% of the problems in the Middle East.” By March, he warned that Israel would “do everything in its power” to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. These remarks coincided with the drafting of a UN Security Council resolution in February calling for a halt to Israeli settlement expansion. His statements served a familiar purpose: framing Iran as an existential threat while Israeli bulldozers continued their advance across occupied Palestinian land.

September 2024 brought unprecedented military escalation. After months of tit-for-tat strikes between Israel and Iran—including drone assaults, assassinations, and strikes on diplomatic compounds—Netanyahu once again declared that Israel was targeting Iran to prevent nuclear proliferation. What went largely unmentioned in most Western media was that the UN had passed Resolutions 2728 and 2735 earlier that year calling for ceasefires in Gaza, and a major General Assembly vote—Resolution ES-10/24—demanded Israel end its occupation of Palestinian territory within twelve months. Rather than face questions about Israel’s expanding presence in the West Bank and the rising civilian toll in Gaza, Netanyahu raised the nuclear alarm—successfully changing the subject.

On 13 June 2025, Netanyahu warned that Iran was just “months away” from building a nuclear bomb. That same day, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion—a massive wave of airstrikes targeting Iran’s Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan nuclear facilities. The IAEA had recently confirmed that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile had reached nine tonnes, a development Netanyahu cited as proof of imminent danger. But there was another, less discussed context: just seven months earlier, in November 2024, the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes. By escalating tensions with Iran and reframing the conflict as a defensive necessity, Netanyahu appeared to be shielding himself from legal and political vulnerability.

Here is a breakdown of key dates:

These timelines raise serious questions not just about Netanyahu’s credibility, but about why the international community continues to allow this pattern to go unchecked. For three decades, he has invoked the spectre of Iranian nuclear annihilation while presiding over some of the most aggressive military and settlement policies in Israel’s history. Each time global attention veers too close to Gaza, to the West Bank, or to international law, the red line moves a little further. The bomb is always just out of reach, yet always close enough to dominate the headlines.