Netanyahu: Rouhani's speech cynical

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's speech at the U.N. General Assembly "cynical" and "full of hypocrisy." "As expected this was a cynical speech that was full of hypocrisy," Netanyahu said in a press release Wednesday. "Rouhani spoke of human rights even as Iranian forces are participating in the large-scale slaughter of innocent civilians in Syria. ... He spoke of a nuclear program for civilian purposes even as an IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] report determined that the program has military dimensions," he said. The Iranian president failed to offer a practical solution to stopping his country's nuclear program, Netanyahu said. "This is exactly Iran's strategy -- to talk and play for time in order to advance its ability to achieve nuclear weapons. The international community must test Iran, not by its words but by its actions." In the press release, Netanyahu also defended his decision to order Israeli U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz to boycott the Iranian president's speech, Haaretz reported. "I could not allow the Israeli delegation to be part of a cynical public relations ploy by a regime that denies the Holocaust and calls for our destruction," he said. Haaretz noted just days before Rouhani's trip to New York, he attended a military parade in Tehran where signs posted on a convoy of trucks carrying long-range rockets and missiles, called for Israel's destruction. The signs written in Persian said, "Israel must stop existing," the paper said.