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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a stark and uncompromising assessment of Middle East politics in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Netanyahu said that today's world is witness to a "great battle between the modern and the medieval," widely interpreted as meaning a battle between modernity and the forces of radical Islam; manifested by the threat of Iran to Israel and the world, through its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
"You see at stake is not merely the future of my country. At stake is the future of the world and nothing could imperil our common future more than the arming of Iran with a nuclear weapon.
To understand what the world would be like with a nuclear-armed Iran, just image the world with a nuclear-armed al-Qaeda"

To illustrate his point Mr Netanyahu theatrically brandished a diagram of an old-fashioned
bomb, marking with a red line the point at which the international community should take decisive action against Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
"In the case of Iran's nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium and Iran has to go through three stages. The first stage, they have to enrich enough low enriched uranium. The second stage, they have to enrich enough medium enriched uranium. And the third stage and final stage, they have to enrich enough high enriched uranium for the first bomb. Where is Iran? Iran's completed the first stage. It took them many years, but they completed it and they are 70 percent of the way there. Now, they are well into the second stage and by next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb"

The bold and graphic presentation induced derision on the internet, inspiring a series of spoof cartoons including one where Netanyahu is shown blackened by the 'bomb' that has blown up in his face. And critics have lampooned the Israeli PM for behaving like a school teacher talking to a group of naïve students instead of a room of world leaders.

However, speaking outside the UN building following the speech , Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman defended his Prime Minister, telling reporters that the bomb ploy was aimed at the general public, not world leaders.

Despite dividing opinion, the speech succeeded in thrusting the Iranian nuclear conundrum back into the media spotlight, hammering home a clear and simple message intended to resonate with voters in the US and other western democracies, that the time for prevarication is over.