Timeline: Benjamin Netanyahu's decades-long Iran nuclear bomb alarm – 'the boy who can't stop crying wolf'

Iran-Israel Conflict: The Israel-Iran war entered its seventh day on June 20. 

Israeli strikes on Iran, which began on June 14, have so far killed at least 657 people and wounded 2000 others, according to a US-based human rights group. Iran has also retaliated with its missile hitting a hospital and near a Microsoft office in Israel's Beer Sheva.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been claiming that a nuclear threat from Iran is imminent. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” he said, suggesting the timeline could be months, even weeks.

Israel called the operation "Rising Lion," stating it aimed at Iranian commanders and missile factories. "We are at a decisive moment in Israel's history," Netanyahu said, adding that Iranian scientists working on a nuclear bomb, ballistic missile programme and Natanz uranium enrichment facility were targeted in the operation.

'The boy who can't stop crying wolf'

This is not the first time that Ntanyayu has warned of a nuclear bomb threat from Iran. In fact, he has been talking about this threat for more than three decades. So much so that Iran's former foreign minister Javad Zarif had in 2018 likened Netanyahu to 'the boy who can't stop crying wolf' for his constant public warnings about Tehran's nuclear programme, according to a Reuters report.

It was in 1992, when Netanyahu, while addressing Israel’s Knesset as an MP, claimed for the first time that Tehran is only years away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. “Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb,” Netanyayu had said.

Here is a timeline of Netanyahu’s three-decade long warnings about Iran’s nuclear programme.

1992: Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, as an MP, where he first claimed that Tehran was only years away from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

1995: Netanyahu comes up with a book ‘Fighting Terrorism’ in which he mentions the nuclear bomb threat from Iran.

1996: Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the joint session of US Congress on July 10. In his address, Netanyahu called on Europe and Asia to join efforts to isolate Iran and Iraq and prevent them from developing nuclear capabilities that he warned would bring catastrophe.

1999: Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon discussed the issue of the transfer of Russian nuclear technology to Iran on March 22, 1999, during a trip to Moscow, Russia.

2009: A US State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed him telling members of Congress that Iran was just one or two years away from nuclear capability.

2012: Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu brandished a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate his claims that Iran was closer than ever to the nuclear threshold. “By next spring, at most by next summer … they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” he said.

2014: Netanyahu addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in Washington, DC, on March 4, 2014 where he urged world powers not to allow Iran to retain the ability to enrich uranium. Netanyahu said in his address that Iran must be stripped of all nuclear technologies with bomb-making potential.

2015: Netanyahu spoke about Iran and the nuclear threat during a joint meeting of the US Congress in the House chamber at the US Capitol on March 3, 2015 in Washington, DC.

2018: Netanyahu presented material on Iran's purported nuclear programme in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2018.

Iran's then foreign minister Javad Zarif, had likened Netanyahu with 'the boy who can't stop crying wolf' for his constant public warnings about Tehran's nuclear programme, and his repeated threats to shut it down, one way or another.

"You can only fool some of the people so many times," Iran's then-foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said in 2018 after Netanyahu had once again accused Iran of planning to build nuclear weapons.

(With agency inputs)