Who should draw the red line ?

 
He used a red felt pen to mark a line near the top of the bomb and said that Iran should not be allowed to pass beyond that line. He said the line represented 90% of Iran’s progress in making a nuclear warhead, and added that Iran would reach it “by next spring, at most by next summer.”

Whether his claims are ill-founded or unfounded are not known, but anybody who watched the video can clearly observe that that drawing was not substantiating anything, and was completely unnecessary.

If we have to sum up this strange new Netanyahu antic – of showing a thick white card-paper with the bomb drawing – in one single word, it would be: ridiculous.

No. I do not mean to say that the issue is unimportant and unnecessary. I just wish to say that the drawing he used was irrelevant and irreverent.

This childish representation, in a way, was mocking the UN delegates who are, we all know, blessed with enough common sense to grasp the issue without this needless picture. Netanyahu’s use of this graphic  was akin to insulting the intelligence of people assembled there.

Anyway, I have no intention of trivializing the serious issue of nuclear weapons.  I strongly believe that nuclear weapons in the hands of any irresponsible country can be very dangerous. They would be dangerous to not just Israel, but to the whole world. When nations sit on nuclear warheads, a very brief security lapse or a minor human error can plunge the whole world into a holocaust of catastrophic proportions.

But the question here is – why is the pot calling the kettle black? Has not Israel already passed beyond the red line? Don’t they already have many nuclear heads in their arsenal? Why is it wrong for others, when it is right for Israel?

This is just what Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on Saturday. “If having the atomic bomb is passing the red line, the Zionist regime, that possesses dozens of nuclear warheads and weapons of mass destruction, has passed the red line years ago, and it has to be stopped.”

Iran has always been saying that its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes, and has been denying all accusations of Israel and some other countries, that it is making nuclear warheads. So, is the suspicion really warranted?

This must also remind us of 2003 situation, where the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell showed some sophisticated graphics of satellite pictures to convince the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.   

Well, it is almost ten years since. And we are yet to find those weapons on which a global paranoia was systematically created, leading to the attack on Iraq.

Also, we should ask ourselves, why is it that some countries with nuclear weapons  can say that others cannot have them? Is it fair? 

Who should really draw the red line?