Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech last Wednesday at the United Nations warning the world about the Iranian nuclear program proved no more popular with the press mandarins at the New York Times than Winston Churchill’s constant alarums about a revanchistGermany proved with the press poo-bahs ofEngland in the 1930s. Like Churchill in his time Netanyahu has become a Cassandra offering dire warnings that are too painful to contemplate and which the world therefore prefers to ignore.

Netanyahu presented a thoroughly documented lawyer’s brief arguing thatIranis entitled to no presumption of innocence with respect to its nuclear program. Newly installed Iranian president Hassan Rouhani had claimed in his speech at the UN thatIran’s nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. Netanyahu had a few questions for him. Why does a nation with enough oil and gas reserves to last 200 years require a nuclear program? And if that program is purely civilian why wasIrancaught hiding underground facilities at Natanz in 2002 and Fordow in 2009?

And if that program is peaceful why hasIranenriched uranium far beyond the level of any conceivable civilian use? Why does it insist on building a hugely expensive infrastructure for enrichment when it could purchase enriched uranium directly fromRussiaat a fraction of the cost? Finally what possible civilian calculus could make it worthwhile forIranto endure economic sanctions that have crippled the economy and almost completely depleted its foreign currency reserves rather than comply with UN resolutions on its enrichment program?

If Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful Netanyahu demanded to know why was the regime working on intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe today and the United States within three or four years? Why has it according to the International Atomic Energy Agency tested nuclear triggers worked on mathematical modeling of missile trajectories of nuclear weapons and tested components of nuclear weapons?

NETANYAHU TOOK AIM at the “moderate” credentials of Rouhani and the meaningfulness of that designation in the Iranian context. He noted that Rouhani served as head of the Iranian National Security Council from 1989 through 2003 during which time Iranian henchmen gunned down three Kurdish nationalists in aBerlinrestaurant in 1992. (According to a German court Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and then-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were fully involved in ordering the assassinations.) During that same period Iranian secret services were responsible for the bombings of the Jewish community center inBuenos Aires in which 85 people were murdered and theKhobarTowersinSaudi Arabia in which 19 US servicemen died.

Rouhani’s lament of the “human tragedy inSyria” rings a little hollow Netanyahu noted when Bashar al-Assad remains in power only by virtue of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hizbullah troops fighting on his behalf. Rouhani’s condemnation of the “violent scourge of terrorism” is a bit strange coming from the mouth of a president whose country is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and which has been involved in terrorist attacks or plots in 25 cities in the last three years including a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington D.C.

The difference between an Iranian “moderate” and a “hard-liner” said Netanyahu is that between a wolf in sheep’s clothing and a wolf in wolf’s clothing. Rouhani he noted has been a loyal servant of the Islamic revolution for almost three decades and was one of only six candidates allowed to stand for election out of nearly 700 who submitted their names for consideration.

The prime minister might have noted that the supposed moderation of previous “moderate” presidents never extended toIsraelor the cessation ofIran’s nuclear program. Rafsanjani mused in a public speech at Tehran University that “one atomic bomb could wipe outIsrael” and frequently referred toIsraelas a “one-bomb” country. His successor Mohammad Khatami laid out the logic of a nuclear exchange withIsrael. One nuclear bomb would wipe out tinyIsrael while a comparable Israeli response would leave the overwhelming majority of the Iranian population intact.

NETANYAHU DID NOT DOUBT Rouhani’s sincere desire for negotiations with the West. But he warned against confusing the Iranian eagerness for negotiations with a willingness to dismantle its nuclear program in a fashion that would not allow it to ramp it up again at a time of its choosing.

The charm offensive for which Rouhani has been selected Netanyahu charged is designed only to loosen the noose of sanctions from aroundIran’s neck. He noted that the Iranians are masters at the use of negotiations to gain time to develop their nuclear program. Rouhani himself has frequently boasted of how asIran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005 he kept the Europeans talking in Tehran even asIrancompleted work on its nuclear conversion facility atIsfahan. He is pursuing the same strategy today Netanyahu implied: using a moderate façade to gain time forIran’s race toward nuclear capability.

Netanyahu noted an uncomfortable truth his listeners would prefer not to have heard: A bad diplomatic agreement is worse than none at all. He reminded the General Assembly that in 2005 North Koreaagreed to dismantle its nuclear program and admit international inspectors. The New York Times proclaimed “diplomacy it seems does work after all.” A year later North Korea tested its first nuclear weapons device.

A nuclearIranguided by an expansionist ideology possessed of huge oil and gas resources sitting athwart one of the world’s vital waterways through which much of its oil passes and with sleeper terror cells positioned around the world said Netanyahu is 50 times more dangerous than the backward impoverished hermitkingdomofNorth Korea.

THE PRIME MINISTER’S STERN ADDRESS did not sit well with the New York Times. The Times characterized the speech as “aggressive” “combative” and “filled with sarcasm” and went so far as to accuse Netanyahu of seeming “eager” for a military attack.

The Grey Lady fretted that Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters in Congress “were so blinded by distrust of Iran” that they might “block President Obama from taking advantage of new diplomatic openings and sabotage the best chance to establish a new relationship since the 1979 Iranian revolution.”

Yet the paper did not challenge a single fact presented by Netanyahu and acknowledged thatIsraelhas “legitimate reasons to be wary.” Nor did it provide a scintilla of evidence thatIranis prepared to dismantle its nuclear program as opposed to making cosmetic concessions in an effort to achieve a reduction in sanctions. Supreme Leader Khamenei not Rouhani has the only vote that counts and there is no indication his position has changed.

The fear that Netanyahu and his “hard-line” supporters could block the president from taking new diplomatic openings is absurd. Netanyahu has no power to dictate to Obama even if he wanted to. Equally absurd is the charge that Netanyahu is spoiling for a fight. Netanyahu knows well that an Israeli attack even if successful (which is by no means guaranteed) would at most set back the Iranian program a few years.

And it would come at a huge cost toIsrael.Iranand its Hizbullah allies would surely respond with heavy missile attacks onIsrael andIranwould likely loose sleeper cells against Israeli and perhaps American targets around the world. The diplomatic fallout would be horrendous especially if there was any negotiating process going on and might result in heavy sanctions againstIsrael. In short no Israeli prime minister would attack unless convinced thatIranwas on the brink of nuclear capacity and the only thing worse than the parade of horribles enumerated above would be a nuclearIrancommitted to wipingIsraeloff the face of the map.

WHAT MAKES IT SO HARD for Western elites to hear Netanyahu’s argument or even treat it as one worthy of refutation? Two preoccupations guide those elites. The first is that military force or the threat thereof must always be only a last resort. The second that diplomatic talks are always positive. The failure of the West to confront Hitler atMunich which would likely have resulted in the revolt of the German general staff against Hitler resulted in the deaths of tens of millions in World War II. And the last ten years of nuclear negotiations withIrandisprove the second proposition. Negotiations have benefitted onlyIranand allowed it to arrive at the very edge of nuclear capability.

We live French thinker Alain Finkielkraut has observed in an age of theory in which an elegant theory trumps a thousand unruly facts. This is not theory in the scientific sense. The theories are not built upon observed facts and unlike scientific hypotheses they are not subject to refutation by the facts.

Lee Smith in the National Review outlines the “theory” behind the Rouhani fever sweeping the Western media. He calls it “junior-year-abroad sociology” according to which all societies are basically alike. Each society has its moderates and hard-liners. The former want to raise their families in peace find meaningful labor and take intellectually rewarding vacations. The latter want only power which they gain by promoting fear of the “other ” even at the risk of sending their neighbors’ children to war.

Thus if Rouhani is a “moderate” and Netanyahu a “hard-liner” the former must be trusted. Maybe Rouhani did not actually condemn the Holocaust as CNN interviewer Christiane Amanpour claimed. But since it is well known that he is a “moderate” he would likely condemn it and Amanpour telling viewers that he did (even when he didn’t) is a noble act of cultivating peace.

The notion that all people basically want the same things and all societies are alike prevents Western elites from taking seriously the power of Islam or concerning themselves with its theology. They cannot give credence to the Islamic revolution’s expressed goal of world domination any more than one could take seriously Hitler’s goal of Lebensraum for the master Aryan race in Mein Kampf in which he laid out in great detail his plan for world conquest.

Netanyahu took notice of the delusional myopia of those who think all the chants of “Death toAmerica! Death toIsrael!” are nothing more than “wild rhetoric and just bluster for domestic consumption.”

To them he responded that the world may have forgotten the central lesson of the 20^th century but the Jewish People have not: “[W]hen a radical regime with global ambitions gets awesome power sooner or later its appetite for aggression knows no bounds.”