Israel: After UN speech, press mocks 'Bibi-boom'

The image of Israel's Premier Benyamin Netanyahu yesterday at the United Nations while he is showing a cartoon-like drawing of an 'Iranian bomb' has unleashed a wave of ironic and concerned comments by Israeli analysts. Everybody stressed how 'Bibi' Netanyahu succeeded in quickly conveying to all a very complex concept - how Iran's nuclear programme is fast approaching a point of no return. Under the headline 'Bibi-Boom', an analyst with Yediot Ahronot wrote with sarcasm that the Israeli prime minister is returning to his origins: the comic books he presumably read during his adolescent years spent in the United States. Maariv also published an ironic comment noting how the 'red line' in the drawing stopped at 90% of uranium enrichment which the premier believes should be obtained by Tehran in the spring 'or mostly in the summer' of 2013. In the past, Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Ehud Barak had warned that an attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructures could be necessary in the summer of 2012. But the red line, noted the paper, was moved forward to the autumn of 2012 and has now been moved 'for another six months'. The nationalist press praised Netanyahu's intervention but also noted that yesterday he 'raised the game up a notch'. What will happen, demanded a report in the Makor Rishon daily, if the summer of 2013 should go by without the Iranian atomic projects being blocked? By mentioning a deadline in his UN speech, Netanyahu has placed the seriousness of Israel's deterrence at stake, said the newspaper.