Benjamin Netanyahu warned the world yesterday that the battle against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria must not deflect attention from the necessity of denying Iran a nuclear weapon.
The speech was in part a response to the one made last week by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in which he accused Israel of carrying out a "genocide" in Gaza, though Mr Netanyahu mentioned Abbas only once by name. He opened his speech saying he had come "to expose the brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my country and against the brave soldiers who defend it."
It was also a response to the earlier speech of Iranian President who he accused of launching a "manipulative charm offensive" and shedding "crocodile tears" over terrorism while Iran itself is orchestrating "global terrorism."
Mr Netanyahu equated IS with Hamas in Gaza and other militant Islamic movements in other parts of the world, saying that "some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shi’ites. But they all share a fanatic ideology. They all seek to create ever-expanding enclaves of militant Islam where there is no freedom and no tolerance". He compared them to the Nazis who "believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith."
At the hub of all this, he said, was Iran, and while he encouraged the American-led coalition against IS, he repeated twice that "to defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war."
