Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Photo: Ariel Harmoni/Israeli Defense Ministry.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel’s Channel 2 Nov. 8 that Iran has slowed its nuclear weapons development by about eight months through the diversion of some enriched uranium from military to civilian use.

Back in September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provided the United Nations General Assembly with a cartoonish diagram of a bomb, drawing a red line across where he thinks Iran’s nuclear program would be beyond the point of no return—sometime in the spring or summer of 2013. Now that timetable might be extended, according to Barak’s comments.

The defense minister’s remarks “appeared to be based” on an International Atomic Energy Agency report from August, the Associated Press reported.