Pointing to a still shot of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu drawing a red line
on a caricature of a bomb, a senior Iranian official said on Sunday that the
entire world was laughing at Israel.
“The fake regime of Israel is mocked
by everyone in the world today, although such cheap actions of the leaders of
the occupying Zionist regime are nothing new,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister
for Consular, Parliamentary and Expatriates’ Affairs Hassan Qashqavi was quoted
as saying by the semi-official FARS news agency.
Netanyahu utilized an
original approach during his address at the 67th UN General Assembly Debate on
Thursday, displaying a diagram of a bomb and then physically drawing a red line
on it. The prime minister was trying to convince the international community to
set clear red lines on Iran’s nuclear program.
Speaking at a ceremony in
Iran’s southern city of Kangan, Qashqavi said that Netanyahu’s cartoon set off
“an explosion of jokes and mockery” at the General Assembly. He added that the
prime minister was intimidated by Iran’s dignity and might into formulating such
silly reactions, according to FARS.
While some have skewered Netanyahu
for his Looney Tunes bomb graphic, the prime minister said over the weekend his
goal was achieved: to get the world talking about red lines for
Iran.
Netanyahu, in interviews from New York with Israeli television
networks, said his objective was to translate the principle of setting red lines
on Iran into simple, practical terms. “This is resonating today around the
world,” he said.
“Hundreds of millions of people saw it and understand
now what they perhaps did not understand beforehand – what it means to stop
Iran, at what phase and what stage of its nuclearization.
The red line
needs to be before Iran finishes the second stage of enriching the material it
needs for an atomic bomb,” the prime minister said.
Herb Keinon
contributed to this report.