Haaretz reports: In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday evening, U.S. President Barack Obama will send a clear and more assertive message to Iran regarding its nuclear program, White House insiders told Haaretz. Obama will stop short, however, of giving Tehran an ultimatum, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been demanding.
A senior White House official said: “We have a red line: the president is determined to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. We have consistently framed that issue around Iran’s profound failure to meet its international obligations with respect to its nuclear program. Therefore, [the General Assembly] presents another opportunity for him to underscore that Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.” In an interview yesterday with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Obama dismissed Netanyahu’s calls for him to set “red lines” for Iran as “noise.” The Prime Minister’s Office refused to comment on the interview.
