Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani has revived talks with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany over its nuclear program. "Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction,” Rouhani said in his September 24 speech to the UN General Assembly, "have no place in Iran's security and defense doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions.” In his address today to the General Assembly, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and threatened to go to war to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Over the next year, Netanyahu could be proven correct in his apocalyptical assessment of Rouhani and the Iranians. But his speech was inflammatory, deeply one-sided, and hyperbolic in its assessment of Iran’s recent history. If there is a genuine chance for fruitful negotiations between the G5+1 and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program—and President Obama clearly thinks there is—then Netanyahu’s bellicose rhetoric probably made success less likely by giving credence to the fears of Iran’s hardliners. In its tenor, Netanyahu’s denunciation of Iran and its new president echoed former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s denunciation of the United States and Israel before the UN in September 2011.

Here is the substance of Netanyahu’s argument. According to the Israeli Prime Minister, Iran’s presidents since 1979 “have come and gone. Some presidents were considered moderates, others hard-liners. But they’ve all served that same forgiving creed” of “death of the Jews.” “The only waves that Iran has generated over the last 30 years are waves of violence and terrorism.” Iran’s is a “fanatic regime” that “pledges to wipe Israel off the map.” Iran “is developing nuclear weapons” and is using the promise of negotiations as a “ruse” to buy time just as North Korea did. “Iran wants to be in a position to rush forward to build nuclear bombs before the international community can detect it and much less prevent it.” In other words, Iran’s various regimes have all pursued the same objective, but done so under different outward guises. “Ahmadinejad was a wolf in wolf’s clothing. Rouhani is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a wolf who thinks he can the pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.”

First, the overall history. Are there no distinctions to be made among Iran’s presidents and their policies? One need only look back at the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, who served from 1997 to 2005. Khatami was no angel—and neither is Netanyahu—but beginning in 1998, he made several overtures to the United States and cooperated with the Bush administration during the war in Afghanistan. The most important overture was in May 2003, when Khatami’s government sent a proposal to the United States through the Swiss ambassador. In exchange for the United States dropping sanctions and ceasing to support regime change in Iran, Khatami’s government offered to cut its support for Hamas, disarm Hezbollah in Lebanon, and allow intrusive inspections of its nuclear program. The Bush administration ignored the proposal.

And what about Rouhani then and now? Rouhani was Khatami’s nuclear negotiator in 2003, and after the failure of the May overture, Rouhani convinced Ayatollah Khamenei to suspend nuclear enrichment in hopes of reaching an agreement with the U.S. and European Union. When the talks broke down, Rouhani was ousted from the regime’s inner circles. Khatami and Rouhani’s failure to win a nuclear agreement with the United States was a reason for Khatami’s defeat in 2005 and his replacement by Ahmadinejad.