Video: Attack on Iran Close?

Netanyahu's Iran Cartoon Bomb Timed to Make Big Impact

September 28, 2012

Reuters - The "Bibi bomb" was born of days of discussions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a brain trust of close advisers on how to make a powerful impact in yet another speech on Iran's nuclear program.

"The diagram made his address special," a senior official in Netanyahu's entourage said on Friday about the cartoonish drawing of a bomb the Israeli leader, who is nicknamed "Bibi," used at the U.N. General Assembly as a prop to illustrate what he sees as Iran's drive for an atomic weapon.

It may have raised a titter on Twitter, where the New Yorker magazine quipped, "if Wile E. Coyote ever gets hold of this, the Roadrunner is toast." But the graphic got what Israel was hoping for - attention.

Such a Looney Tunes analogy would not have been lost on Netanyahu, who was educated in the United States, and at least one of his top advisers, Ron Dermer, who was born there and immigrated to Israel.

But on the world stage at the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu took out a marker and dramatically drew a red line just below a label reading "final stage" to a bomb, in which Iran would be 90 percent along the path to having sufficient weapons-grade material.

"I tried to say something yesterday that I think reverberates now around the world," Netanyahu said at a meeting on Friday with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Iran denies allegations by Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power, that it is enriching uranium in order to build a weapon.