Netanyahu warns 'odious regime' is greatest threat to humanity
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A week before crucial nuclear talks with Iran, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday delivered a blistering tirade against the country, hinting anew that if negotiations failed to halt the regime's suspected weapons programme, Israel might take matters into its own hands.
In his speech to the UN General Assembly, the Israeli leader used the claim by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust never happened to argue that Iran was the incarnation of the greatest threat facing humanity, representing the "marriage of Islamic fanaticism and weapons of mass destruction". As he opened his address, Mr Netanyahu brandished the protocol of the 1942 Wannsee conference in Berlin at which the Nazis finalised their plans to exterminate European Jewry, as well as a copy of the original plan for the Auschwitz/Birkenau death camp.
"Are these documents lies?" he asked. "Perhaps you think this man's odious regime threatens only the Jews, but how wrong that would be. History shows that what starts as an attack on the Jews ends up by engulfing many others."
The Iranian delegation was conspicuously absent when Mr Netanyahu spoke, just as Israel's had been for Mr Ahmadinejad's address. He castigated those who had stayed to listen. "What a disgrace, what a mockery of the charter of the UN," Mr Netanyahu said of those who had listened to a man who had said the Holocaust was a lie.
In policy terms, Mr Netanyahu broke little ground on Iran or on the deadlocked peace talks with the Palestinians. In an address intended as much for domestic consumption as for the General Assembly, he did not mention the vexed settlements issue.
But his uncompromising language about the threat posed by Iran underlines the importance of the 1 October talks between a senior Iranian negotiator and representatives of the US, China, Russia and the EU trio of France, Britain and Germany.
This week, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, as well as David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, have warned Iran that these discussions will present it with a choice: serious moves to halt its uranium enrichment programme, or the prospect of much tougher sanctions from the UN.
Both sides are dug into their positions but some potentially new elements emerged this week. Russia, a Security Council member, has indicated it is ready to countenance stronger sanctions against Tehran but China still seems unenthused by the idea.
Mr Ahmadinejad, in an interview with The Washington Post, suggested that Iran may allow its nuclear experts to be questioned by Western scientists – an offer that if taken up might allay suspicions about the nature of its nuclear programme. Tehran also wants to buy enriched uranium from the US for what the Iranian President insists are medical purposes.
This uranium would fuel a reactor supplied to Iran by Washington during the Shah's regime. The request could put the US on the spot. If the administration refuses, the Iranians would insist that they have no choice but to enrich their own uranium, ostensibly for humanitarian purposes.
In his speech to the assembly, Mr Ahmadinejad was as uncompromising as Mr Netanyahu. He dismissed suggestions that he had stolen the country's election earlier this year – the ballot, he said, had been "glorious and fully democratic". He also delivered an oblique tirade against the Jews, condemning the "private networks" that he said largely ran the world.
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Comments
perhaps Bibi might like to tell us just whom the Iranians hold under occupation and continued colonisation? No-one! Israel on the other hand maintains one of the most brutal occupations and colonisations in modern history.
Egregious hypocrisy still. The greatest threat to world peace in public opinion is the United States and Israel. Both of whom have the track record for war crimes and human rights abuses.
Obviously not. Did anyone actually listen to what Mr A said?! Peace, non-nuclear world, and other crazy rantings such as that. LEAVE THEM ALONE AND LET THEM DEVELOP THEIR OWN NUCLEAR ENERGY! God forbid they were self sufficient and not slaves of the anglo-american empire. That doesn't fit the USA dominated UN's model of the empire. Sorry I mean the world.
the only threat to world peace is israel and their false flag attacks around the world. and the governments of the US and britain who bow down to them while they carry out their genocide in palestine. why does everything have to be on their terms? surely after our illegal unjust disasters in afghnistan and iraq, mr brown and his murdering predecessor mr blair, should think twice about rocking the boat in the middle east even more.
iran have never declared war on anybody for over 100 years. leave them alone.
But it is reassuring to see that Israel is really keen to find a peaceful solution that is fair to everybody to help resolve the problems in the Middle East. Nice that they now see a way forward to live in peace with their neighbours. And I'm sure those they have historically had disagreements with will now feel reassured that there will not be invasions, that their land will no longer be stolen, etc.
When one thinks about the question "Is there intelligent life in space" and"Are we alone in the Universe" and then think what some alien civilisation would see were they observing us - they would avoid us like the plague. We call ourselves an "intelligent" species - maybe we should look at how we treat each other.
If Iran is a threat to humanity, then it is no threat to Israel as there is no humanity ia such a stinking filthy regime that believes that non-Jews are animals that can be killed at will. Israel is a country of child killers and body snatchers who every single day murder and torture Palestinians and steals their land just because they are not Jews.
http://royaldutchshellplc.com/2008/01/0
Written in Dundee in 2003, ..... population 144,000.
What would you call the top concept? And isn't it the top concept hinself who told us that jews were "an arrogant and hard faced people", ..... or is God of "a dispicable mind set" also cosmos8? A city on a hill cannot be hidden, ..... Zion? There is only one thing worse than jewish murder after what happened to them in the second world war and that is murdering the wrong people. Why don't they come and start murdering Scots now? No wonder God deserted them. If you don't include Jesus they haven't had a prophet for almost half of that 5,000 years, .... some chosen people. Incidentally if correct every Jewish Nobel prize falls as all go back to Michelson-Morley. Of course this is anti-Semitic though it supports Palestinians, Semites, and my father is Jewish. The fact I have to mention these things shows us how far debate has been tainted by the lies of the Jewish state, Zionism has a lot to answer for not least in stealing the wrong people's land. It's amazing to hear their ugly lies and half truths. Sometimes I think we're dealing with infants or mentally ill people who dare to claim the moral high ground. These are people who indeed have no shame nor decency.