Israeli Leader Excoriates New President of Iran

UNITED NATIONS — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel sought to shred the credibility of Iran’s new president on Tuesday, using his annual speech at the United Nations to cast the Iranian as a beguiling figure who used soothing words and charm to mask intentions to build nuclear weapons.

In remarks interspersed with sarcasm about the new president, Hassan Rouhani, who visited the United Nations last week and said that Tehran wanted to reach a peaceful resolution of its protracted nuclear dispute, Mr. Netanyahu declared that Mr. Rouhani was no different from any other president of Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

“They’ve all served that same unforgiving creed, that same unforgiving regime,” said Mr. Netanyahu, who regards Iran as Israel’s most potent enemy and its development of a nuclear weapon as an “existential threat.” He said “President Rouhani, like the presidents who came before him, is a loyal servant of the regime.”

Mr. Netanyahu dismissed any thought of allowing Iran to enrich uranium to even a low level, insisting that the only way to assure it would never build a nuclear weapon was a complete dismantlement of its capability to enrich nuclear fuel. He exhorted the West to intensify economic sanctions on Iran instead of easing them, as Mr. Rouhani has demanded.

“I wish I could believe Rouhani, but I don’t,” Mr. Netanyahu told the General Assembly, where Iran’s seats were vacant. “Because facts are stubborn things.”

He said the international response to Iran’s entreaties for sanctions relief should be “distrust, dismantle and verify,” and he repeated his warnings that Israel reserved the right to preemptively strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if it deemed the Iranians were close to producing nuclear weapons.

Mohammad Khazaee, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said afterward that his country had found Mr. Netanyahu’s speech inflammatory, rejected the notion that Iran was building a nuclear arsenal, and asserted its right to self-defense.

“The Israeli Prime Minister better not even think about attacking Iran let alone planning for that,” the Iranian ambassador said. He capped his remarks by saying that Iran’s “smile policy” was better than “lying.”

Hours before Mr. Netanyahu spoke, Iranian diplomats sought to make a pre-emptive strike of their own, calling him a persistent liar and warning President Obama not to allow the Israelis to subvert the positive spirit cultivated by Mr. Rouhani in his visit to the United Nations.

The remarks were delivered by Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and his spokeswoman, Marzieh Afkham, in Iranian state news media. They followed by a day a visit by Mr. Netanyahu with Mr. Obama at the White House, where both presented a public display of unity regarding Iran’s disputed nuclear energy program.

“Over the past 22 years, the regime, Israel, has been saying Iran will have nuclear arms in six months,” Mr. Zarif said in an interview on state television. “The continuation of this game, in fact, is based on lying, deception, incitement and harassment.”

He added: “We have seen nothing from Netanyahu but lies and actions to deceive and scare, and international public opinion will not let these lies go unanswered.” Mr. Netanyahu, he said, “was the most isolated man at the U.N.”

Earlier on his Twitter account, Mr. Zarif alluded to the Obama-Netanyahu meeting on Monday in a message that read: “President Obama needs consistency to promote mutual confidence. Flip-flop destroys trust and undermines US credibility.”

And Mr. Zarif’s spokeswoman, Ms. Afkham, was quoted by Iranian news agencies as saying, “The pressure coming from the Zionist regime is down to its isolation and its anger that the policy of the Iranian government has been well received.”

NYTimes.com

By SOMINI SENGUPTA and RICK GLADSTONE
Published: October 1, 2013