Armed with a cartoon-style drawing of a bomb with a lit fuse, Benjamin Netanyahu took to the UN General Assembly podium in 2012 to try to convince the world of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme.

The Israeli prime minister said the Islamic republic was enriching uranium at such a pace that it was on track to be able to produce sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon within months. With a marker pen, he drew a red line across the bomb to highlight the stage of the process where Iran had to be stopped, warning that “the future of the world” was at stake.

Fast-forward 13 years, and Netanyahu says Tehran has moved far beyond his red line by establishing a programme to develop nuclear weapons and is using that as his prime pretext for Israel’s devastating assault on Iran.