A high level official in Iran fired back this weekend following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations on Thursday where he took out a red magic marker to draw on a chart depicting an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.
The so-called "red line" is the point at which Israel says Iran will have reached breakout nuclear weapons capacity and the perceived point at which Israel—with or potentially without US support—would take military action against Iran.
Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said on Saturday that Israel long ago crossed the "red line" and remains the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear weapons arsenal.
“If having nuclear bomb is crossing the red line, [Israel], which has dozens of nuclear warheads and various kinds of weapons of mass destruction, has crossed the red line years ago and should be dealt with,” Vahidi said on Saturday.
Which is more dangerous, he asked, “An occupier and aggressive regime... which possesses nuclear weapons and threatens to launch military attack... or Iran which has no nuclear weapons, and stresses the necessity of nuclear disarmament?"
"If American and other Western authorities truly seek to avert threats against the region and the world," Vahidi continued, "they must mount pressure on the dangerous regime of Israel through cutting ties with the regime and imposing sanctions on it until all its weapons of mass destruction are destroyed.”
According to the non-partisan Arms Control Center in Washington, the Israeli's possess between 75 and 200 nuclear warheads.
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