“An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: ‘The Devil’s Recipe.’ ”

Image President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday. Credit... Mike Segar/Reuters

Mr. Bush spoke on Tuesday about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and how they might be curbed, and about his broader visions for the Middle East — visions that Mr. Chávez saw as insincere, ridiculous or both.

“Wherever he looks, he sees extremists,” said Mr. Chávez, who won office by defeating a businessman educated at Yale, Mr. Bush’s alma mater. “He looks at your color, and he says, ‘Oh, there’s an extremist.’ Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.”

Indeed, Mr. Morales, another leftist, does raise potential problems for United States interests in Latin America, though perhaps not as thorny as those posed by Mr. Chávez. Unlike Bolivia, Venezuela belongs to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and is a major energy supplier to the United States, and Mr. Chávez has courted Fidel Castro and the leaders of Iran and Syria, all factors that make him a man Washington must watch.

Mr. Chávez’s remarks were translated from Spanish, and while subtleties can sometimes be lost in translation, his feelings about the United States seemed to come through clearly enough. The United States, he said, is “the gravest threat looking over our planet, placing at risk the very survival of the human species.”

“We appeal to the people of the United States to halt this threat, like a sword hanging over our heads,” Mr. Chávez said.

It was not clear if Mr. Chávez was exhorting Americans to rise up in revolution, or if his gibe was an indirect reference to previous American-aided upheavals in Central and South America.