Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is insisting that a strategy of containment would not work to stop Iran’s nuclear program and is calling for the United States to impose “red lines” that could lead to military action.

“Iran is guided by a leadership with an unbelievable fanaticism,” the prime minister told NBC’s David Gregory in an interview that aired on Sunday. “You want these fanatics to have nuclear weapons?”

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“I mean I heard some people suggest, David — I actually read this in the American press — they said, ‘Well, you know, if you take action, that’s a lot worse than having Iran with nuclear weapons,'” he said of a potential military strike. “Some have even said that Iran with nuclear weapons would stabilize the Middle East, stabilize the Middle East.”

“I think the people who say this have set a new standard for human stupidity.”

While Netanyahu has called for action soon rather than later, President Barack Obama has said that his “red line” was a nuclear-armed Iran.

The president told Telemundo on Wednesday that he had “stated repeatedly, publicly, that red line – and that is we’re not going to accept Iran having a nuclear weapon.”

Watch this video from NBC’s Meet the Press, broadcast Sept. 16, 2012.

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