The international community should not be deceived by Iran’s Rosh Hashana greeting and should focus instead on Tehran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned on Saturday night in response to a surprise holiday twitter blessing from Israel’s arch enemy.
“I am not impressed by the blessings uttered by a regime that just last week threatened to destroy the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said.
On Wednesday, in a surprising move, Iran’s newly elected President Hassan Rouhani appeared to send out a Rosh Hashana greeting on a twitter account under his name, along with a photograph of a Jewish man praying with a skullcap and a prayer shawl.
“As the sun is about to set here in #Tehran I wish all Jews, especially Iranian Jews, a blessed Rosh Hashana,” the tweet said in English.
A Rosh Hashana greeting was sent out in Persian on Thursday from that same Rouhani account.
The account also retweeted a message in English from Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who on Thursday simply wrote in English on his twitter, “Happy Rosh Hashana.”
Zarif had just opened an English twitter account, and the Rosh Hashana blessing was his second tweet in the account.
Christine Pelosi, the daughter of the American politician, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), responded to Zarif’s tweet.
“Thanks. The New Year would be even sweeter if you would end Iran’s Holocaust denial, sir. “@JZarif: Happy Rosh Hashana,” she wrote.