While the eyes of the world are turned to New York in anticipation and hope for the start of a reconciliation between the United States and Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opted to open the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sept. 17 with an aggressive statement toward Iran. In the presence of the reporters and photographers who are invited to cover the first few minutes of cabinet meetings, Netanyahu said that in the speech he plans to deliver at the UN General Assembly in New York, and in his meeting with US President Barack Obama, he will focus on the issue of stopping Iran’s nuclear program. “A rogue state which develops or takes up weapons of mass destruction is certainly likely to use it,” Netanyahu said, adding with bluster: “Only a credible military threat can enable diplomatic processes or other moves to stop this arming.”

The prime minister was not satisfied with this routine message regarding the Iranian threat. In what sounds like veiled criticism of the international community’s “laxness,” Netanyahu laid out four “essential steps” needed to stop the nuclear project: a halt to all uranium enrichment; removal of all enriched uranium from Iran; closure of the facility at Qom and a halt to plutonium production. He ended his words with the overused mantra: “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?” [Hillel the elder, Avot 1:14]

Netanyahu could have conveyed his message through the accepted diplomatic channels used in international relations. An experienced politician such as himself knows well how to leak and then deny, a way to send messages without their being portrayed as an attempt to impose his will on a sovereign state.

While the world waits in anticipation for the opening of an American-Iranian dialogue at the highest level, Netanyahu opted to publicly dictate a blue-and-white, homemade “red line” to Iran. The discourse of victimization and fright was once again mixed with arrogance and violence. The leader of the right-wing camp, the camp that emphasizes the state of Israel’s “national honor,” repeatedly insults the Persian nation. This is particularly galling when it is dished out by a government which has for decades used force to rule over millions of Muslims and which is a member of the rejectionist club that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).