Netanyahu derides Iranian holiday greetings

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “not impressed” by New Year greetings supposedly tweeted by Iranian President Hassan Rohani.

“I am not impressed by greetings coming from a regime that only last week threatened to destroy Israel,” Netanyahu said Saturday night according to Israeli media reports.

“As the sun is about to set here in #Tehran I wish all Jews, especially Iranian Jews, a blessed Rosh Hashanah,” the tweet posted Sept. 4, erev Rosh Hashanah, said.

The office of the recently elected Iranian president has not denied that the account, @HassanRouhani, is his and it is believed that it would not persist without his approval.

Rohani was elected this year as a relative moderate ostensibly willing to make Iran’s nuclear program more transparent, but resisting calls by Western states and Israel to reduce Iran’s uranium enrichment.

“The Iranian regime will be examined only by its actions, and not by salutations,” Netanyahu also said Saturday night, following two days of Rosh Hashanah and the Jewish Sabbath.

Netanyahu said that the purpose of the message “is to divert attention from the fact that even after the elections, it continues the enrichment of uranium and the construction of a plutonium reactor meant to allow it to develop nuclear weapons that will threaten Israel and the rest of the world.”