Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the United Nations Tuesday afternoon that Israel will never allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons and that it will act alone to prevent a nuclear Iran if sanctions do not work.
He did not mince words in attacking the Iranian regime for being deceitful and anti-democratic, and he provided fact after fact to prove that the regime has been hiding behind “smooth rhetoric” in order to “have its yellow cake and eat it, too.”
The Prime Minister verbally knocked out Iranian President Hassan Rohani, comparing him with his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with one external difference.
“Ahmadinejad was a wolf in wolf’s clothing; Rohani is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A wolf who thinks he can pull the wool over the eyes of the international community, but like everyone else, I wish we could believe Rohani’s words, but we must focus on Iran’s action,” Netanyahu said.
Prime Minister Netanyahu told the United Nations that Rohani is a servant to a “rogue” regime that wants to annihilate Israel and that Rohani simply cannot be believed when he says he wants negotiations over its nuclear program.
He pleaded with the international community not to let up on sanctions in return for “cosmetic concessions” that would allow Iran to race ahead to develop nuclear weapons when it wants.
Iran was quick to respond to what one delegate said was an “extremely inflammatory statement.” The delegate told the General Assembly that the “Prime Minister must not dare think about attacking Iran.”
He countered Netanyahu’s warning that Israel will defend itself by stating, “He should seriously avoid miscalculation against Iran. Iran’s century-long policy of nonaggression should not be interpreted as an unwillingness to defend itself.”
The delegate then tried to turn the tables on Israel, mocking it for demanding that Iran disclose its nuclear program while Israel needs to be “educated” for being the “only non-party” to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Without refuting the Prime Minister’s carefully outlined evidence that Iran is trying to gain capability to manufacture a nuclear warhead, the delegate said with a straight face, “We reject equating the peaceful pursuit of nuclear energy with nuclear weapons.”
The only kind words Netanyahu had for Iran was for the ancient Persian empire.
“Our hope for the future is challenged by a nuclear-armed Iran…but I want you to know that this was not always the case,” he said. “Some 2,500 year ago, the great Persian King Cyrus ended the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people…[and] proclaimed the right of Jews to return to the Land of Israel and to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.”
He said this historic tie lasted for centuries but that in 1979, “a radical regime took over Iran” and “was busy thrashing the Iranian people’s hopes for democracy” while encouraging chants of “death to the Jews.”
The central theme of Netanyahu’s speech was that Rohani is a con artist who has been up to his neck in encouraging the secret development of nuclear weapons and is also an integral part of the Iranian regime’s policies of brutal suppression of domestic opposition and support of terrorist attacks against the West.
“He was on the Supreme Council from 1989 to 2003, during which time Iran gunned down opposition leaders and murdered 85 people in the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires,” Prime Minister Netanyahu asserted. He also fingered Iran for attack that cost the lives of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut.
As for Rohani’s speech in the United Nations last week when he patted the Islamic Republic on the back for being “democratic,” Prime Minister Netanyahu retaliated, “The regime he represents executes dissidents by the hundreds, kills them by the thousands,” and participates in Assad’s “massacre of tens of thousands of men, women and children” while propping up the regime that uses chemical weapons against its own citizens.
“I wish I could believe Rohani but I don’t because facts are …that Iran’s savage record contradicts soothing rhetoric,” the Prime Minister added.
He reminded the United Nations that Rohani, as the negotiator for Iran from 2003 to 2005, “masterminded the strategy that allowed Iran to seek nuclear weapons behind very soothing rhetoric.”
USA Today on Tuesday published evidence to back up Netanyahu’s accusations that Rohani and his Muslim superiors are trying to pull the wool over the world’s eyes.
Last Friday, President Barack Obama gushed over Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who the president said “has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons.”
However, the newspaper cited research from MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) that no such fatwa exists.
“An exhaustive search of the various official websites of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei turned up no such fatwa, either on his fatwa website or on his personal website,” according to MEMRI.
The research group “says the fatwa was first mentioned by Sirius Naseri, an Iranian representative to a meeting of the U.N.’s nuclear agency in 2005, but is not listed among the hundreds of fatwas that Khamenei has issued on his official or personal website,” USA Today wrote.
Netanyahu clearly spelled out Iran’s history of being caught “red-handed” at least twice building underground nuclear facilities and pointed out that it is developing Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), which he said are for the “sole purpose of carrying nuclear warheads.”
He reiterated his demands in last year’s speech at the United Nations that Iran must dismantle its nuclear infrastructure, turn over is stockpile of enriched uranium and stop all enrichment before sanctions can be lifted.
He said sanctions are working and that Rohani was elected to remove the sanctions while continuing to develop nuclear weapons and declared, “Rohani thinks he can get away with it because he has gotten away with it before.”