The Bizarre History Of Netanyahu's Nuclear Iran Crisis

January 1992. Rising Israeli parliamentarian, Benjamin Netanyahu, stands before the Knesset and delivers a chilling warning to the world:

Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb. [This nuclear threat] must be uprooted by an international front headed by the U.S.

February 1995. Three years later, it appears that Netanyahu’s assumption was wrong. But undeterred, he appears on CBS News to make…oh, exactly the same prediction:

Iran will be capable of producing — alone, without importing anything — nuclear bombs within three to five years.

December 2006. Eleven years have passed since Iran was three to five years away from producing nuclear bombs. And as Netanyahu explains on the Glenn Beck Show, that means a nuclear Iran is now only a year — or perhaps a decade — away:

I believe the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, just found traces of plutonium and uranium for the production of atomic bombs […] Iran is gearing up to […] produce 25 bombs, atomic bombs a year, 250 bombs in a decade.

December 2009. Three years and still no bomb, or so it seems. Netanyahu informs a visiting Congressional delegation that Iran can already make a bomb, but they might wait a while before doing so:

Iran has the capability now to make one bomb or they could wait and make several bombs in a year or two.

September 2012. In the three years since Netanyahu claimed Iran alreadyhad nuclear capabilities, he’s ordered the assassination of four Iranian scientists to prevent Iran from developing nuclear capabilities. So naturally, when he addresses the UN, he warns that Iran is closer than ever to developing nuclear capabilities:

By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, [Iran] will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.

May 2018. It’s been six years since Iran’s first bomb was coming next summer, twenty-six years since Netanyahu warned that Iran’s nuclear bomb was three to five years away, and a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) finds no signs of Iran advancing its nuclear program.

A lesser man might be ashamed to continue beating this drum without producing any evidence, but Benjamin Netanyahu is no man:

There’s an enormous amount of information that shows how advanced [Iran is] in their bomb-making work […] They have the wherewithal, the stored-up preserved knowledge, to make a bomb very quickly if they wanted to do it.

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If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that on June 13th, 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his latest terrifying warning about a…well, you get the idea by now:

In recent years, Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs […] And if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It could be within a few months.

But this time, he followed it up with a series of missile strikes on Iran.

And I know what you’re thinking, surely nobody in their right mind would take Netanyahu seriously after this decades-long history of wolf-crying, but I swear, this time is different.

Ignore Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director of National Intelligence, who testified just three months ago that, “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003.”

Disregard people like former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak and various members of the Israel military, who argue that even if Iran were developing a nuclear weapon, Israel’s strikes would only delay it by a few months at best, and at worst, will motivate Iranian hardliners to accelerate their nuclear development.

Don’t be distracted by the fact that the only reason we’re even talking about Iran pursuing nuclear weapons is that Donald Trump, at Netanyahu’s urging, ignored the advice of the entire international community and pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was successfully limiting Iran’s nuclear development.

Because while this might seem like a reckless, evidence-free, potentially world-war-precipitating mistake that will only inflame tensions in the region, Netanyahu has been clear that this is only an attack on the Iranian regime, not the people of Iran.

Israel’s fight is not with you, the great people of Iran, who we respect and admire, our fight is with our common enemy, a murderous regime that both oppresses you and impoverishes you.

Yes, Netanyahu offered almost exactly the same assurances to the people of Gaza eighteen months ago, claiming that Israel had “no intention of occupying Gaza or displacing the civilian population,” before killing them by the tens of thousands and revealing his plans to occupy Gaza and displace the civilian population.

But trust me! This time will be different!

Because, as Netanyahu also said, this is a perfect opportunity to take out oppressive Iranian regime, a move that will bring freedom to the Iranian people and peace to the entire region.

True, he said the same thing in 2002, promising a congressional committee that if the United States helped him “take out Saddam,” who was just on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons (stop me if this is sounding familiar), it would lead to “enormous positive reverberations on the region.”

And yes, what actually happened was that the US and the U.K. got bogged down in an eight-year quagmire where somewhere between sixty and a hundred thousand people died, UN weapons inspectors found no weapons of mass destruction because the threat was entirely made up, and the political instability that followed plunged Iraq into years of civil war that led to enormous negative reverberations across the world.

Because never in the history of the world, not in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya or Syria, has rocking up in a country that is already facing political and economic turmoil and dropping a few kilotons of “freedom” on the population, ever led to stability or peace or democracy.

But hey, I’m sure this time will be different.

It’s been genuinely painful to watch the fallout from Netanyahu’s latest attempt to drag us all into World War III.

Some people, like Ted Cruz and…well, pretty much every American politician, uncritically support it, even though they appear to have no idea whether or why they’re involved.

Others, like Netanyahu and former Israeli spokesman, Elon Levy and several more, are so bereft of shame and empathy that they’ve only just figured out that bombing hospitals and homes is wrong.

And some, perhaps out of disgust for this hypocrisy, are so eager to see Israel lose that they forget they’re “standing with” a regime that beats women to death for showing their hair.

There are no good guys here, there will be no winners, and as is far too often the case, the only people who really lose are the civilians trapped between the Iranian regime and the guy who’s been wishing death, destruction and violent regime change on countries in the Middle East for almost as long as he’s been telling us that Iran was about to get nuclear weapons.

Because even if the regime does lose, what happens next? Iranian society will still be suffering the effects of years of religious fundamentalism, the economy will still be crippled by decades of economic sanctions, the odds of a moderate non-corrupt leadership filling the power vacuum is effectively zero, and the Iranian people will quite understandably blame the suffering that follows on Israel.

So call me crazy, but is anybody else asking themselves if there’s a way to achieve peace in the Middle East that doesn’t involve blowing people up?

Is there a way to live safely in the world that doesn’t require killing and displacing people for decades and then being shocked when they hate you?

Isn’t it worth at least trying diplomacy and restraint and respect for international law before “most-moral-army-in-the-world-ing” innocent people into oblivion?

Maybe Netanyahu truly believes that disproportionate, civilian-bound forceis the only way to solve Israel’s problems.

But after decades of misery for all concerned, maybe this time should be different.

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