UNITED NATIONS, United States — Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, speaks during the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters, yesterday.

“Ladies and gentlemen, would you let ISIS enrich uranium? Would you let ISIS build a heavy-water reactor? Would you let ISIS develop intercontinental ballistic missiles. Of course, you wouldn’t,” Netanyahu said.

“Then you mustn’t let the Islamic state of Iran do those things either, because here’s what will happen,” he said. “Once Iran produces atomic bombs, all the charms and all the smiles will suddenly disappear. They’ll just vanish. And it’s then that the ayatollahs will show their true face and unleash their aggressive fanaticism on the entire world.”

Netanyahu praised the growing effort to defeat ISIS, the militant group that has seized large swaths of Syria and Iraq, but simultaneously chastised many of the countries joining that coalition for failing, he said, to recognise that ISIS and Hamas “are branches of the same poisonous tree”.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blatantly manipulated the facts when he compared Hamas with the Islamic State and Iran in a UN speech yesterday.