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

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.

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.