Besides Israel, no walk-outs during Rouhani’s debut speech

Brief and effective, Rouhani ends his speech.

Strikingly, he reasserted Iran’s right to continue enriching uranium.

But strikingly, too, he spoke of the need to assuage world suspicion regarding Iran’s nuclear program, promising “transparency.”

He also cleverly mentioned the Torah and Psalms in the final passage of his speech. There was no mention of Israel by name, and he called Palestine occupied, but he also spoke of the legitimacy of “all” countries.

Rouhani did nothing to curb Obama’s readiness to “test” diplomacy to resolve the nuclear face-off, but neither did he give ground on the key issues of nuclear concern.

This was largely as expected. Expected too, but effective nonetheless, was the different, more gracious tone from that of Rouhani’s predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His speech was more direct and easier to follow than his predecessor’s were as well.

CNN notes that unlike in previous years, there were no Western walk-outs during the speech (besides the Israeli delegation), and that the highest-level US diplomat for years was in the hall to hear the Iranian president.