WarSclerotic

If Jerusalem really wanted to further embarrass Washington over the about-face that it performed in response to Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s charm offensive, it wouldn’t make do with revealing the arrest of Ali Mansouri, the Belgian-Iranian national who was detained in Israel on charges of spying for Iran earlier this week.

Mansouri, who is alleged to have plotted terrorist attacks against American targets in Israel, was pulled out as an “ace” at a time that was hardly coincidental. While news of his activities certainly stung the Americans, the “ironclad” material that implicates Iran in international terrorist activities — the “smoking gun” — can be found on the pages of the reports on international terrorism released by none other than the U.S. State Department just four months ago.

According to the report, Iran’s terrorist activities worldwide reached levels that have not been witnessed since the 1990s. It executes these plans mainly by way of the Quds (Jerusalem) Force, a division of the Revolutionary Guards headed by Qassem Suleimani. Suleimani’s Quds Force is also the outfit that reportedly activated Mansouri.

According to the Americans, the Quds Force’s tentacles reach around the globe. Its commander, which the U.S. views as an influential member of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s inner circle, is on the list of some of the most wanted terrorists in the world, a list that the U.S. itself drew up. Suleimani was given this “distinction” after it was determined that his organization played a role in the attempted assassination of the Saudi ambassador in Washington two years ago.

In the Israeli context, which is naturally of more interest to us, there is nothing for us to reveal to the Americans. The U.S. already knows almost everything. Some of the information was combined with the State Department’s report. Other declassified elements could be found in reports issued by intelligence bodies and the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

Here is what we know about Iran’s ties to Hamas. To this day, hundreds of Hamas operatives have trained in Iran. They reached Iran by exiting Gaza via Egypt. From there, they flew to Syria and continued on to Tehran. Upon leaving Iran, they were exempted from having their passports stamped so as not to incriminate them in the future.

Hamas operatives who reached Iran received months-long training at a closed military base. They were given instruction on combat tactics and advanced technology, rocket fire, activating explosives, sniper fire, and other guerilla-like exercises that are reminiscent of Hezbollah’s modus operandi. The British Sunday Times reported years ago that Iran has already trained seven courses-worth of Hamas members. It is safe to assume that more have come through their system since.

Iran has funneled cash to subsidize Hamas — and, even more so, Islamic Jihad — activities in the Palestinian Authority. Its Quds Force built a vast, complex smuggling network that stretched across numerous borders and included both maritime and terrestrial routes. The key country in this equation is Sudan.

Sudan has been a way-station for arms destined to reach Gaza through Egypt. From there, the arms were to be smuggled into the Strip through an infrastructure of tunnels closely watched and monitored by Hamas. There were, of course, numerous attempts to smuggle arms by sea.

The Iranians also provided Gaza-based terrorist organizations with medium-range Fajr-5 missiles (which possess a range of 75 kilometers), a few of which were launched during Operation Pillar of Defense. They also exported 122-milimeter Grad rockets with ranges of 20 to 40 kilometers.

Iran has also made little effort to conceal the nature of their relationship with Hamas. For its part, Hamas has reciprocated with overt gestures of gratitude and praise toward Tehran. The history of this romance is well-documented. The Iranians will have a hard time erasing it from memory.

The two central figures in the Quds Force who have been most prominent in the organization’s dealings with Palestinian terrorist organizations are Suleimani and his deputy, Esmail Ghaani.

Crossing all lines

Iran does not only act against Israel through its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. A number of terrorist attacks and attempted terror attacks in various spots around the globe in recent years vividly highlight the grim fact that Israel remains subject to a worldwide Iranian terrorist onslaught.

As the State Department concluded: “The terrorist activities advanced by Iran are not limited just to the Middle East but are also executed in many countries around the world. The methods employed by Iranian terrorism change from time to time, ranging from indiscriminate suicide bombings to ‘pinpoint’ assassinations (including against diplomats).

“The targets of Iranian terrorism are Israel, Jews, the U.S., and Western allies; Arab countries opposed to Iran (with a special emphasis on Saudi Arabia and Bahrain); and oppositionists to the regime. The fact that these terrorist actions are orchestrated by a country that possesses considerable resources renders Iranian terrorism much more dangerous and operationally sophisticated than that practiced by local terrorist groups that do not enjoy backing from a state.”

Among the instances of Iranian terrorism listed in the State Department report are weapons shipments which Iran organized for the Taliban in 2006, and which was to be delivered by way of Kandahar in Afghanistan; instruction and training to militant Iraq Shiite groups both inside and outside of the country; massive support to the Syrian regime, including military aid; backing of the rebels in Yemen; and logistical support to al-Qaida, which is allowed to operate on Iranian soil.

Last year, Hezbollah operatives acting at the behest of Quds Force commanders sought to attack tourist sites frequented by Israelis in Bangkok. One of the terrorists who was apprehended led the local authorities to a hideout where the organization stored large quantities of chemical substances used to manufacture explosives.

Early last year, an explosive device was magnetically attached to the car of an Israeli diplomat in Bangkok. Thai police arrested two Iranians who activated the device, though two other Iranians managed to flee.

The most successful Iranian-sponsored terrorist gambit was perpetrated by Hezbollah. In 2012, the organization managed to detonate a large explosive device that was planted at the back of a bus filled with tourists (mostly Israelis) in the Bulgarian resort town of Burgas. Five Israelis, the Bulgarian bus driver, and the terrorist who perpetrated the act were killed in the incident. Thirty-six other Israelis were wounded, three of them seriously.

A similar tragedy was averted around the same time in the Cypriot town of Limassol, where local law enforcement arrested Hossam Taleb Yaqub, a Hezbollah agent of Lebanese origin who was gathering information on Israeli tourists arriving to the island.

The Azeri precedent

The annual terrorism report compiled by the U.S. State Department sheds light on a series of attempts to target Israeli, American, and Western interests worldwide. It is in Azerbaijan, however, where the Iranian connection is particularly evident.

Although Azerbaijan is a Shiite Muslim country (70 percent of the population is Shia), it has a decidedly pro-Western orientation. The authorities there have instituted a clear separation of religion and state, and the government maintains warm ties with Western countries, including Israel, much to the chagrin of Tehran, where the regime is run by religious clerics.

The Iranian link to terrorism, which in many instances is not apparent, is in this case quite exposed. Early last year, three Azeri terrorists were caught working at the behest of “the Iranian Special Services.” They planned to stage terrorist attacks against Jewish targets. According to the Azeri authorities, each of the planning stages was subject to the close supervision of Iranian intelligence handlers.

One of the targets was the Or Avner Jewish school in Baku. The terrorists planned to kill two Chabad emissaries, one of them a rabbi and the other one the headmaster of the Jewish school that serves the local community. The three terrorists were arrested outside the school. One of them used to live in Iran, and another was promised a payment of $150,000. The third was tasked with providing sniper fire.

According to the State Department, the three men received arms, explosives, and ammunition, all of which was smuggled from Iran in the latter stages of 2011. Their arsenal included a Dragunov sniper rifle outfitted with a silencer, two magazine cartridges, an optic scope, three hand guns, bullets for the rifle and guns, and 16 demolition blocks.

In March 2012, 22 Azeri nationals were arrested on charges of maintaining contacts with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The network that was uncovered had planned to strike a number of Western embassies and other entities that had ties to Western governments. In April, local security forces nabbed 17 other operatives who were also found to have possessed large quantities of armaments.

In May, Azeri authorities apprehended another 40 terror suspects. A subsequent investigation revealed that they had planned to carry out an attack during the Eurovision song contest which was being held in Baku. The attacks were supposed to take place in the hotels that were hosting the delegations to the competition, including the Israeli team. This could have been a horrific rerun of the attack that took place at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Luckily, the plot was snuffed out before it could be executed.

Last October, a Baku court convicted 22 members of a terrorist network that was operating at the behest of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The terrorists were found to have plotted to attack Americans, Israelis, and other Westerners.

Monitoring with apprehension

Numerous intelligence agencies around the globe attribute the February 2012 attack in New Delhi against an Israeli diplomat’s car to the Quds Force. The car was driven by Tal Yehoshua-Koren, the wife of an Israeli diplomat, who suffered serious injuries. All leads point to Iran, even in cases of attempted attacks against Israeli diplomats stationed in missions in Tbilisi, Georgia and Nairobi, Kenya.

In June 2012, two Iranians, Ahmed Abdul Fathi and Mohammed Wasayid Mansour Moussawi, were arrested in Kenya. They led investigators to a safe house in Mombasa, where 15 kilograms of explosives were discovered. The terrorists’ target was apparently Israeli-owned hotels situated along the Mombasa beachfront. They were also said to have kept track of Israeli diplomats and businessmen who frequented the area. American experts believe that the quantities and quality of explosives were sufficient to completely destroy the medium-sized hotel.

Lt. Col. (res.) Michael Segel, who served in the Iranian department of the Military Intelligence’s Research and Intelligence Division, authored a memorandum for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. In it, he notes that the U.S. State Department reports give considerable attention to the Quds Force in the section devoted to state sponsors of terrorism.

“Iran continues to be the most active state sponsor as it relates to terrorism,” one of the State Department’s most recent reports reads. “Iran’s Quds Force trained the Taliban in Afghanistan and even arranged for weapons shipments to Taliban members.”

“The Revolutionary Guards are comprised of ground forces, air forces, naval forces, missiles, volunteer militias, and the Quds Force,” Segel said. “All of the military forces (the army and the Revolutionary Guards) are subservient to the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, which operates outside of Iran’s borders, is tasked with strengthening ties with Islamic organizations and non-state actors. This entails arranging for weapons supplies for them, training, funding, ideological indoctrination in camps in Iran, Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq.

“The Quds Force is the most effective, important means available to the Iranian leadership,” Segel said. “It determines its policy for exporting the revolution by means of sabotage activities against moderate Arab regimes, and it is also responsible for high-profile terror attacks. This duality enables it to deny and obfuscate the Quds Force involvement in terrorism.”

“The Quds Force uses its proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hezbollah of the Hijaz, Hezbollah of Bahrain, and secular (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command) as well as Islamist (Hamas and Islamic Jihad) Palestinian groups to carry out missions,” he said.

The revelations regarding Iranian involvement in the attempted assassination of the Saudi ambassador to Washington in October 2011 has already prompted the U.S. to impose sanctions on the five individuals involved in the plot, among them the commander of the Quds Force, Suleimani.

The emerging dialogue between the Obama administration and the ayatollah regime in Iran, which continues to openly declare its desire for Israel’s eradication, is currently focused on the nuclear issue. Nonetheless, Israeli officials intend on pressing the Americans to address the matter of Iran’s global terrorist activities. Israel obviously has a direct interest in this issue, for it devotes considerable resources to thwart these operations. Here, too, Israel is not alone.

The U.S. and many other Western countries have suffered blows at the hands of Iranian terrorism. One would expect that an Israeli demand to curb Iranian terrorism would fall on receptive ears and put the Iranians to yet another test. The Iranians, for their part, are showing no signs as of yet that they intend to fold up their terrorist operations overseas, with the Quds Force as the main entity responsible for its perpetration.

Nadav Shragai is a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

This week, in high spirits after a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama and after the speech in the U.N., Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to provide an up-to-date picture of the situation as he sees it. He told two stories to illustrate his point.

The first was about the basic training he received as a young recruit in the Paratroopers Brigade. Although it was early in the morning, he and his fellow recruits had already been in training for several hours, charging toward a hill on the right and shooting at an empty barrel on the left. After they had run through all the possible scenarios and it looked as though they would be able to go back to their tents for lunch, the commanding officer shouted: “Look out — you’ve got a submarine in the wadi!”

Last week in New York, the Iranians changed tactics, putting a nuclear submarine in the diplomatic wadi. Netanyahu said that the nature of the war had not changed, but that to overcome the difficulty, planned actions had to be combined with the flexibility required in battle.

The second story was about the power of the French national anthem, the Marseillaise. The story goes that a dangerous criminal broke into a private home, and while he was gathering up the valuables, the homeowner returned and ran angrily toward him. The burglar broke out into a rendition of the Marseillaise, and the homeowner instantly stood at attention. The burglar took advantage of that moment to get away.

Netanyahu, who grew up in a Revisionist Zionist home, heard this story as a boy and learned something about the power of educating to positive values. Sometimes, one had to be careful of it. American education sanctifies freedom of expression and requires dialogue, listening and negotiating first and foremost. Sometimes that is ridiculous, as it is now with the Iranians, when the truth is obvious.

Obama spoke last week about the Iranians’ right to develop nuclear power for a civilian purpose, the production of electricity. As of today, roughly 40 countries use nuclear reactors to produce electricity. Those countries have conventional work methods and receive the various ingredients for nuclear manufacture, such as fuel rods, from outside. They also possess other materials that are appropriate for civilian manufacture, such as “light” rather than “heavy” water.

They do not construct underground bunkers to hide those reactors, nor do they run advanced centrifuges. They also do not display intercontinental ballistic missiles. These countries do not call for the destruction of other nations. They are not regimes that support terrorism against other countries, nor do they possess enormous reserves of natural gas, as does Iran. The Americans are well aware of all this, but according to Netanyahu, mentioning these things with the proper relevance is not the name of the game.

Do not be misled

The Israeli prime minister and the American president met for three hours. Netanyahu’s first question was: “And what will happen when you discover that they are lying?” Obama answered, “What do you suggest?” “Look,” Netanyahu said, “We are not old, but we are old hands.”

Netanyahu said that there must be no letup on the Iranians and the world must not allow their words to mislead it. Action against the Iranians must be like the well-known drill of the submarine in the wadi. The Israeli approach is that a combination of formidable sanctions and a credible military threat has always been the most effective formula. It worked with Iran and also with Syria. This approach must be maintained as long as the Iranians move forward with their nuclear program.

Netanyahu also asked Obama to promise that there would be no relenting on the economic sanctions on Iran. Obama did not grant his request. In a public statement, Obama said that “anything that we do will require the highest standards of verification in order for us to provide the sort of sanctions relief that I think they are looking for.” Both sides stressed the agreement they had made, pushing aside the disagreements. Obama also said, on camera, “Both the prime minister and I agree, since I came into office, that it is imperative that Iran not possess a nuclear weapon.”

Netanyahu referred to Obama’s statement that he was committed to Israel’s security, but said right away that there were not two players on the court, but three. “Iran is committed to Israel’s destruction,” he said, and then spoke bluntly: “We have a saying in Hebrew. We call it ‘mivhan hatotzaa’ — you would say it in English: What’s the bottom line? And the bottom line, again, is that Iran fully dismantles its military nuclear program.”

Netanyahu met with Obama in Washington on Monday. When they made their statements to the cameras, it was evident that they were having a dialogue rather than an argument or a lecture. Both parties spoke, and both parties listened. Netanyahu faced a president who had not yet finalized a plan of action for Iran’s new conciliatory approach. This was a president who understood that he had a certain advantage because the sanctions and the military threat had led to talks, but now was asking himself how to press this advantage to complete the task of Iran’s nuclear disarmament.

Netanyahu believes that this is the time to solidify a common policy — a plan that will emphasize the [Israeli] policy of threats without colliding with the [American] policy of dialogue. Netanyahu believes that the pressure he is applying now is helping with the international pressure on Iran. Still, The New York Times blamed him for the pressure having the opposite effect, and actually sabotaging Obama’s efforts to rebuild relations with Iran.

The prime minister’s advisers this week recalled Netanyahu’s first meeting with Obama, which preceded the sanctions on Iran. It took place in 2007 in the janitor’s office at Reagan National Airport in Washington. Netanyahu, an opposition MK at the time, was a candidate for prime minister, while Obama was serving on the Illinois Senate. At the time, Obama asked, “What is most important to you?”

“Sanctions combined with a credible threat,” Netanyahu answered. “They will stop Iran from becoming a nuclear state.” Two weeks later, Obama proposed a Senate bill to step up the sanctions on Iran. Will Netanyahu find Obama sympathetic once again?

At any rate, Netanyahu sees his actions in Washington, at the U.N. and in the American media as “stopping [Iranian President Hasan] Rouhani from endlessly dribbling the ball,” as he put it. Now, as stated, there are three significant players on the court: Israel, Iran and the United States. In the past, the Europeans and the Americans went with significant economic sanctions because Israel had threatened that if there were not sanctions, we might attack Iran. The Europeans’ real fear was that Israel would act alone.

Now, Netanyahu has made that effective threat of an Israeli military strike to clear the way for a diplomatic solution that will enable Iran to move forward on the right path, without lifting the sanctions. The purpose of the military threat now is to keep the sanctions going.

From talk to action

The prime minister returned to Israel Friday from a five-day visit to the U.S. that centered on the question of the relationship between the two countries. First, Netanyahu’s stated goal was to speak at the U.N. General Assembly. Actually, the important place this past week was not his speech in New York but his meeting with Obama in Washington.

Can Netanyahu influence Obama? Will the American president abandon Israel and leave it alone with its most important task, neutralizing the existential threat posed by a radical regime that seeks to obtain weapons of mass destruction and states openly that Israel must be destroyed? These questions need to be answered as quickly as possible.

The statements that the prime minister repeats time and again — that Israel can protect itself from any threat on its own — are a distress call. So are the statements made by Israel’s official spokespeople that it would attack Iran if it should become a nuclear threshold state with the ability to assemble a nuclear bomb at the decision of the spiritual leader in Tehran.

In the past, it took the threat of an Israeli attack to start the sanctions on Iran. Today, the purpose of that threat is to keep the sanctions going. If the Americans and the EU countries do not heed this distress call, Netanyahu will have to change the equation, go from talk to action, and act alone.

For all practical purposes, Netanyahu has issued a warning. It is as if he is saying: I want to reach the moment of truth, but if you make a mistake, if you relieve or remove the sanctions, or if some countries violate the boycott of Iran because of the new situation that has been created, Tehran could leap past the point of no return. This is the point where they could decide to assemble a nuclear bomb and have one within three weeks. Then, as I said, Israel will act militarily and eliminate the danger.”

As a rule, Netanyahu and the other high-ranking officials around him, particularly Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, believe that foreign observers will not be able to do the job of keeping Iran from obtaining a bomb. Only Israel’s intelligence agencies will be able to do that. Observers can be misled, while what counts is the true intention of Iran, which has chosen deception over transparency.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing

At the end of the U.N. General Assembly session, now that the fog has dissipated, we can see clearly that Netanyahu has put the option of an Israeli strike on Iran back on the table, but we must not look at it only from the military perspective. This is a diplomatic move whose purpose, as stated above, is to keep the sanctions in place. From a public-relations standpoint, Netanyahu’s speech was a speech of facts that presented absolute truths. It was the speech of a prosecutor trying to stop a dangerous international criminal from being released on bail just because he had put a kippah on his head on beginning his new job.

Once again, Netanyahu is not ruling out dialogue with the Iranians if that should be effective, and if those involved use the model that worked with Libya: sanctions accompanied by military threat. The prime minister does not want to see the model that failed with North Korea, which said that it had given up its intentions, but kept its nuclear capability.

Still, his personal opinion, like that of the entire defense establishment, is that there is no more time for talk. Israel is threatening that any dialogue is superfluous and cannot provide the Iranians with immunity, and that Iran, as a “threshold state,” will be attacked by us. Netanyahu says that this is no empty threat. It is honest, serious and credible. It is convincing and shows sharp teeth. Israel has capabilities, so the Americans and the Europeans should expect action on the ground if that should be necessary.

During his speech in the U.N. last year, Netanyahu drew a red line on a diagram of a bomb. Many people said that this was a gimmick, but actually, since then, the Iranians have taken care not to cross that red line. Now, the prime minister has drawn a new line, the color of which does not matter: no to a threshold state that enables the construction of a bomb within three weeks. Israeli officials say that it is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who makes the decisions in Iran, and not President Hasan Rouhani, who was described this week as “a loyal servant of the regime” — a clerk, not a leader.

“Now here’s a strategy to achieve this,” Netanyahu said at the U.N., referring to four actions Iran is taking to get the sanctions lifted while retaining its nuclear capability. “First, smile a lot. Smiling never hurts. Second, pay lip service to peace, democracy and tolerance. Third, offer meaningless concessions in exchange for lifting sanctions. And fourth, and the most important, ensure that Iran retains sufficient nuclear material and sufficient nuclear infrastructure to race to the bomb at a time it chooses to do so.”

Netanyahu countered with four actions of his own that would put an end to Iran’s plans to obtain nuclear weapons and dismantle its nuclear program: “First, cease all uranium enrichment. This is called for by several Security Council resolutions. Second, remove from Iran’s territory the stockpiles of enriched uranium. Third, dismantle the infrastructure for nuclear breakout capability, including the underground facility at Qom and the advanced centrifuges in Natanz. And, four, stop all work at the heavy water reactor in Iraq aimed at the production of plutonium. These steps would put an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and eliminate its breakout capability.”

In his speech at the U.N., Netanyahu said, “Rouhani doesn’t sound like Ahmadinejad. But when it comes to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the only difference between them is this: Ahmadinejad was a wolf in wolf’s clothing. Rouhani is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a wolf who thinks he can pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.”

But, said Netanyahu, although the international community would like to believe in the change Rouhani is trying to display, it has Iran on the ropes, and must not allow it to get back up for another round. What’s needed is a knockout.

Ever since Iranian President Hasan Rouhani gave his address at the United Nations General Assembly last week, the world has been living in some kind of fantasy. At the Iranian movie festival in New York, Rouhani managed to sell the world on a romantic comedy in which the Iranians and the rest of the world live happily ever every after. If it wasn’t about an Iranian nuclear bomb and an existential threat to Israel, it could have been rather funny. And if it weren’t for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own U.N. address this week, the Iranian movie could have just kept on running.

Netanyahu was the last speaker at this year’s General Assembly. Some say that he really did come too late. To borrow terms from the field of social psychology, Rouhani won with the primacy effect, while Netanyahu won with the recency effect.

The prime minister’s advantage lies in that he concluded the assembly. He could see that there wasn’t a single righteous man among the assembled world leaders who would tell the Iranians the truth. On the contrary, Rouhani was able to meet with almost every official he wished to meet with, and thus proved once and for all that Iran is not at all isolated. He was even the one to dictate the level and quality of his contact with U.S. President Barack Obama: It began as a planned casual meeting accompanied by a handshake, as he himself admitted, during a luncheon hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, but ended up being a phone call just before he returned home to Iran.

Iran became the world’s, rather than just Israel’s, problem a long time ago. Nevertheless, Israel’s prime minister looked to his left and to his right and saw that among all the speakers there was not one who could communicate a sharp, clear message to Iran. There was not one whose speech reflected a historic perspective or any genuine concern. There was not a single person who stood up and said “the emperor Rouhani has no clothes.”

Therefore, on Tuesday, it was up to Netanyahu to assume the unpleasant task of putting an end to the Iranian fantasy. Netanyahu undoubtedly took the complex responsibility upon himself to bring us all back down to earth, which is hard and cold, just like the reality of the Iranian nuclear program. Netanyahu was left with the task of exposing that what Iran is actually offering is lies in exchange for diplomatic relations, and lies in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

Netanyahu understands that though the world is no longer what it was, Iran is still the same Iran. When it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, it really doesn’t make any difference to Netanyahu whether the president in Iran is named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hasan Rouhani. In a serious speech, devoid of gimmicks, Netanyahu tried to tear the mask off the face of the Iranian president and burst the bubble. He described Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Judging by the responses in the world, Netanyahu succeeded in this extremely unpopular mission. Netanyahu, the party pooper, not only managed to return home safely, he even managed to bring the world back down to earth.

He didn’t come to win any popularity contests

“A nuclear-armed Iran in the Middle East wouldn’t be another North Korea. It would be another 50 North Koreas,” the French weekly Le Point quoted Netanyahu’s speech. A Canadian radio station chose to emphasize Netanyahu’s remark that “Israel will stand alone” in the face of Iran. The British BBC network opted to underscore the Rouhani angle while Sky News went for the quote “Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons.”

The headlines in the American media were many and diverse. ABC stressed Israel’s resolve not to allow Iran to achieve military nuclear capability, while the Los Angeles Times chose to remark on the Israeli warning against Iranian deception, whose smiles are aimed only at lifting crippling sanctions and not curbing the nuclear program. Netanyahu’s 33-minute-long speech yielded a plethora of headlines.

The Al-Jazeera website decided to highlight Netanyahu’s warning not to trust Rouhani. On the whole, the media in the Gulf states enjoyed Netanyahu’s speech immensely. It would be a lie to say that the warming relations between Tehran and Washington were a cause for celebration in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates.

In his speech, the prime minister mentioned how the important newspaper The New York Times failed in its analysis of the nuclear situation in North Korea. The prime minister, we’ve established, didn’t come to the U.N. to win any popularity contests. He came with one objective: to openly put all the facts on the table. The following day, The New York Times wrote that the Israeli prime minister was sabotaging Obama’s efforts to reconcile with Iran.

One must admit that Netanyahu’s speech was up against some tough competition in real time: the menacing budget standoff that ultimately led to the shutdown of the U.S. government. This was the issue that was on the minds of the American public more than anything else this week. It is safe to assume that even during the meeting between Netanyahu and Obama at the Oval Office a day before the prime minister’s speech, each leader had a slightly different set of priorities: one was thinking about the looming shutdown perpetrated by the Republicans, and the other was thinking about shutting down the Iranian nuclear program.

Credit without guarantees

“I think Netanyahu’s speech was a terrific speech,” Massimo Lomonaco of the Italian ANSA news agency told me this week. But he confessed that the world is occupied with other problems at the moment. In Italy, for example, the locals were more concerned with the no-confidence vote against Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, which ended up failing.

“I don’t really think that the Italian public is especially worried about what is going on in Syria or Iran,” Lomonaco said. Officials in Jerusalem are well aware of this, and though Netanyahu’s speech was directed at the media as well as public opinion, it was mainly directed at Obama, other world leaders and also Iran, where it was received loud and clear.

Rouhani, who, until Netanyahu’s speech was the star of the General Assembly, touched on Netanyahu’s comments on Wednesday during a cabinet meeting. “That an aggressive regime in the region names Iran with coarse language is the cause of our happiness,” Rouhani told reporters in Tehran. He gave Netanyahu’s speech a lot of attention, and it appeared that this time, his eternal smile was prompted by irritation rather than pleasantry.

Rouhani gave himself a lot of credit in Tehran this week. He boasted how Iran, with its sober policies, had prevented regional war, and how he received five letters from Obama asking him to meet in New York during the General Assembly — invitations that he said he rejected. Rouhani even explained that the conditions were not ripe for a face-to-face meeting because of the “dark” atmosphere that still surrounds American-Iranian relations and because a decades-long crisis cannot be resolved in a matter of days.

There is no doubt that Netanyahu’s speech came right on time. The world was being blinded by Rouhani, even though we have all already seen this movie with the “liberal” Mohammad Khatami, who was elected president of Iran in 1997 and served in that role until 2005. Back then people were talking about Khatami in the same kind of terms, as though he was some kind of Mikhail Gorbachev who would bring about the Iranian version of glasnost (freedom of speech, increased openness).

Even though that never happened and even though Iran never did away with its nuclear program — they only put it on hold when the Americans landed in Iraq in 2003 — Khatami, and now Rouhani, received, and continue to receive a lot of credit from the West. Credit without any guarantees.

That is precisely the reason why Netanyahu felt he needed to expose Rouhani’s true nature. Netanyahu knows full well that very few people in the world, if any, have read Rouhani’s book, published in 2011, in which he openly describes how he tricked the world when Iran completed building its nuclear infrastructure in Isfahan while simultaneously exchanging soothing words with the European negotiators.

The prime minister’s objective wasn’t only to warn, expose and lay blame, but also to alert the world to the looming dangers. The world, Netanyahu knows, really wants to extricate itself from crisis, even if the solution is nothing more than fantasy or perception. That is why many media outlets ran articles urging the West to lift the economic sanctions and boost Rouhani’s position against the Iranian conservatives and against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Netanyahu came to the U.N. to clarify and remind the world that Rouhani, who accompanied the leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to exile in France, and returned with him as a victor to Iran, was not fighting against the conservatives and the religious institution — he was a part of the religious institution.

Netanyahu also wanted to remind the world exactly how that same Rouhani served as his country’s national security adviser at a time when Iran was involved in global acts of terror, all the way from Buenos Aires to Beirut. How much could Rouhani have changed? Netanyahu wondered. It is not pleasant for Western ears to hear the truth, but that was the objective of Netanyahu’s speech.

Netanyahu wanted to caution against leaving Iran with even the most minimal ability to enrich uranium. “There are those who would readily agree to leave Iran with a residual capability to enrich uranium. I advise them to pay close attention to what Rouhani said in his speech in 2005,” Netanyahu said.

“A country that could enrich uranium to about 3.5 percent will also have the capability to enrich it to about 90 percent. Having fuel cycle capability virtually means that a country that possesses this capability is able to produce nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu quoted Rouhani, adding that “This is why Iran’s nuclear weapons program must be fully and verifiably dismantled.”

It didn’t take long after Netanyahu’s speech for Iran to prove that it is exactly the same Iran that it always was. In the middle of this past week, Iran’s parliament convened to reiterate the country’s right to enrich uranium. Iran’s deputy foreign minister did say that his country would be willing to discuss the “level of enrichment,” but he added that this time, unlike the period between 2003 and 2005, there was no chance that Iran would suspend its enrichment program.

You don’t need to be an expert to know that Netanyahu is right. Incidentally, even his political opponents back in Israel agree with Netanyahu’s analysis of the Iranian regime and the new Iranian formula — lies in exchange for diplomatic relations.

In order to understand Iran’s strategy of deception we may need to go back to one of the speeches given by Khamenei, Iran’s strongest man and the successor of Ayattollah Khomeini. Khamenei, as the French newspaper Le Figaro revealed, invoked a new phrase — “heroic flexibility” — in reference to a form of wrestling. Khamenei explained that in this sport, the player must display flexibility toward his opponent in order to ultimately defeat him with “red lines that must not be crossed.”

Khamenei further explained that the conditions under which Iran would agree to forge closer ties with the U.S. have not changed. The U.S. must relinquish its dream of replacing the Iranian regime, as former U.S. President George W. Bush once wanted, and it must build a relationship in which both sides benefit, on the nuclear side too. The Iranian regime is willing to do anything to achieve their goal, even at the cost of changing their tone, and that is precisely what is new in the republic today: Rouhani is sweet talking, unlike Ahmadinejad who spoke aggressively and was not open to compromise.

The Islamic republic has made great strides in its nuclear program, and has even installed new centrifuges in its enrichment facility in Natanz. But the West’s sanctions are heavily burdening the Iranian economy, and the isolation is beginning to take a toll.

Tehran is reading the regional map rather accurately. Iran has chosen to present itself as the responsible adult in the region and help the Americans resolve the crisis in Syria. In Washington, there are those who believe that this warming of relations with Tehran, if it doesn’t bring about a drastic shift in Iran’s policy, at least it will help the Shiite republic become less of a rogue state. Netanyahu’s great advantage is that beyond his exceptional oratorical skills, he now has a new coalition that will help Israel reveal Iran’s true face to the world.

Temporary bliss

In conclusion, one could say that this week in New York started out in Farsi but concluded in Hebrew. Also, by some coincidence, the Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday that the head of the Iranian cyberwarfare unit was mysteriously murdered. If true, this report will join a long list of previous reports of mysterious assassinations of high-ranking Iranian officials, over which the Iranians were especially bitter last week in New York.

Netanyahu’s speech generated a lot of responses, particularly in Tehran. Following Rouhani’s response, Iranian Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Hassan Fairouz issued a response of his own, referring to Israel’s and the U.S.’s much-repeated phrase, “the military option is on the table,” saying that it was antiquated and rusty and that the table was a rickety one. He too, like his president, said that Netanyahu’s remarks were cause to rejoice. It is safe to assume that in this, too, the Iranians are lying. One thing is clear, however: Netanyahu has managed to stress the Iranians out. Israel, of all countries, at this complicated juncture, was wise enough to keep its cool.

“If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” Netanyahu said in his responsible address, which aimed to urge the entire world to continue combating the Iranian nuclear bomb.

Netanyahu’s truth speech comes in stark contrast with Iran’s massive deception. The Iranian lie is being distilled in the centrifuges. That is the danger of which Netanyahu wanted to remind the world.