NEW YORK — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 15th address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday was in some ways a classic Bibi presentation.

He railed against antisemitism, blasted what he characterized as the moral fecklessness of European leaders, and came equipped with not one, but two props for his performance — a beeper to taunt Hezbollah for the stunning September 2024 exploding pagers and walkie-talkies operation, and a Starlink internet terminal to needle and shame the Iranian regime over its silencing of its own people.

At the same time, there were surprising omissions from the address, omissions that reinforce the sense that Israel does not have a clear and viable plan right now for countering the central threat to its national security: Iran’s nuclear weapons program, its ballistic missiles, and its rapacious, tenacious regime.

Prior to the speech, senior Israeli officials told The Times of Israel that the “surprises” Netanyahu had promised would come in the form of new intelligence on malign Iranian activities.

He has made such revelations in past speeches at the forum. In 2018, for instance, he exposed what he said was a “secret atomic warehouse” in Tehran and revealed details of Hezbollah missile factories in Beirut.

But this time, he revealed nothing new about Iran and its military machine.

He reiterated Israel’s justification for embarking on the war with the US against the Islamic Republic at the end of February — in a joint bid to definitively prevent Iran’s push to the bomb, destroy its ballistic missile capabilities and trigger the collapse of the regime. None of those goals, declared by both Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, were achieved.

All Netanyahu had left was the empty claim, at the start of his speech, that he had “exactly” fulfilled his vow “to prevent Iran’s murderous dictatorship from developing atomic bombs,” and the prediction, near his conclusion, that “one day, and it may not be far away, the Iranian people will be free… This evil regime will fall.”

Curiously, he didn’t mention the Abraham Accords or the dream of normalized relations with Saudi Arabia.

And perhaps most surprisingly, he referred to Trump only once in the 40-minute speech, after lauding the US president five times in last year’s address.

Stepping carefully on Iran, to avoid irritating Trump

These omissions........

© The Times of Israel