Iranian leader's smooth diplomacy poses new challenge for Israel
A charm offensive toward the West by Iran's new president and his nuanced approach to his predecessor's Holocaust denial have run into an Israeli wall of suspicion hardened by Tehran's nuclear pursuits. ● Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will not be fooled by Hassan Rouhani's international outreach, and the world must not be either. So when Netanyahu arrives in the United States next week, he will be on what aides describe as a mission to unmask Iran's new administration - even as the West sees a potentially promising partner for negotiations to stop what it fears is a drive by the Iranians to develop atomic weapons. "We've anticipated ever since Rouhani's election that there would be American dialogue with Iran," a senior Israeli official taking part in the annual U.N. forum told Reuters. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian energy purposes only. Rouhani said in his U.N. speech on Tuesday that nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction "have no place in Iran's security and defense doctrine. Israel, widely assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, demands a total rollback of Iran's nuclear projects, including uranium enrichment and plutonium production that could arm a bomb.
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