Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents were forced to admit that his Sept. 19 speech before the UN General Assembly in New York was a true masterpiece. It was a polished performance that included all the elements on which Netanyahu built his leadership: national pride, reprimanding non-Jews and Israel’s enemies, preaching ethics to the entire globe, and even quite a few punchlines that coaxed smiles and even ripples of laughter from the audience. But above all this in importance, the Iran issue was supreme.
Two years after the signing of the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1, Netanyahu has brought the nuclear threat back to center stage. Or at least, he is trying to do so. An end-of-the-Jewish-year poll by Maariv newspaper showed that contrary to last year, when Iran did not appear on the list of threats that worry the average Israeli, the issue has clearly made a comeback, thanks to Netanyahu. In the poll, Iran lags behind on the list of threats with only 4% support, but this is only the beginning. We can count on Netanyahu that by next year, Iran will occupy a much-advanced place at the top of the list of important strategic threats to the existence of the Jewish state.
