‘Hi, my name is Barack, and I have an Iran problem.”
Those weren’t the words President Obama used in an interview with an Israeli TV station before he sets off for Jerusalem — but they might as well have been. For as anyone familiar with 12-step programs can attest, the first and most critical step is to admit that you have a problem.
In that spirit we welcome the president’s admission to Channel 2 both that it would take only “a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon” and that we obviously “don’t want to cut it too close.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be smiling. For Obama’s new formulation is not only a departure from the vague generalities of before, it’s closer to the language Bibi used at his speech last September before the United Nations.
There, Netanyahu famously diagrammed a bomb and suggested that Iran could be close to 90 percent of the way toward making a nuclear weapon by later this year, a “red line” that Israel refuses to let Iran cross.
Exactly what Obama is prepared to do about it isn’t yet clear. But his admission is a good first step.
It’ll be interesting to see how Netanyahu responds — and, even more, how Iran does.