UNITED NATIONS, Sept 27: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that nothing could imperil the world more than a nuclear armed Iran and made a case for drawing a red line against Tehran’s nuclear enrichment programme.

He told the United Nations General Assembly about what he felt were the dangers posed if Iran went nuclear and described for the first time where he would draw a “red line” for Iran’s nuclear programme.

Using a large, cartoonish diagram of a round bomb and fuse, Netanyahu, who many delegates said sounded “arrogant and combative”, said the line “should be drawn right here, before Iran completes the enrichment process, before Iran is a few months or a few weeks away from amassing enough highly enriched uranium to build a weapon.”

“For more than two years we didn’t know Iran was building an enrichment plant under a mountain” at Fordo, he said. “Do we want to risk not being able to find a small workshop in a country half the size of Europe?”

“The red line must be drawn on Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme because these facilities are the only nuclear installations we can see and and target,” Netanyahu said. “And I believe, faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down.”

Netanyahu has repeatedly argued that time is quickly running out to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, and that the threat of force must be seriously considered.“We (the US and Israel) share the goal of stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons programme,” he told the world body. “Israel is in discussions with the United States over this issue and I am confident we can find a way forward together.”

The difference illustrates the gulf that has developed between the two leaders of nations that for decades have worked arm in arm on

intelligence and security issues in the Middle East, sharing hardware, technology and an approach to common threats, said Aaron David Miller, an adviser to US secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations from 1978 to 2003.

US-ISRAEL RELATIONS: The tone of Netanyahu’s speech and whether Israel strikes Iran in the next few months, against US wishes, could impact the future of US-Israeli relations, Jon Alterman, a former US diplomat now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies told a Television station talk show..

And that “could be more important for Israel’s security than the question of whether Iran has a nuclear weapon,” Alterman added.

Despite recent statements by US Ambassador for the UN, Susan Rice, that there is “no daylight” between American and Israeli policy on Iran, “this is the most dysfunctional relationship between an Israeli prime minister and American president I’ve ever seen,” Miller said.

The two men share little trust, he added.

“Obama looks at Bibi (Netanyahu) as if he’s a conman who doesn’t think about anything but his political needs ... and is not serious about the peace process” with the Palestinians, Miller said. “And Bibi thinks Obama is rudderless about the Middle East” and too cautious.