Israel Matzav

Rohani tweets Jewish New Year greetings, Netanyahu rejects them

As you can see above, Jewish New Year's greetings from a Twitter account ostensibly belonging to Iranian President Hassan Rohani were tweeted on Wednesday evening.

On Saturday night, after the holiday, Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected the greetings.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded skeptically to Rosh Hashana greetings tweeted by the Iranian president and foreign minister on the occasion of the Jewish New Year earlier this week, saying Saturday, " I am not impressed with greetings coming from a regime that only last week threatened to annihilate the State of Israel."

Netanyahu stated that "the Iranian regime will be judged by its actions not by greetings aimed at diverting attention from continued uranium enrichment."

And Rohani may not have sent the greetings at all.

Mohammad Reza Sadeq, an adviser to Rouhani, denied that the Twitter account belonged to the Iranian president, telling the Fars News Agency that "any official news on him (the president) is released by the presidential office.”

However, CNN quoted a close aide to Rouhani as saying that, while the president himself did not send out the tweet, staff members in his office run the account, and therefore it is semi-official.

And then there was this interesting exchange between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Christine Pelosi, the daughter of US House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi in response to Zarif's Jewish New Year greetings.

But Netanyahu is right: Actions speak louder than words. Let's see Iran open up all of their nuclear programs for inspection and get rid of at least the weapons components, and then there might be something to discuss.

Labels: Hassan Rohani, Iranian nuclear threat, Rosh HaShanna

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:36 PM