After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most recent sermon to the Congress of the United States, he marched into his palatial D.C. hotel suite where Saddam Hussein romped with several robust young women. The political titans excused their guests and bodyguards, and this conversation, preserved by a Mossad recording device, followed:

Benjamin Netanyahu – What the hell are you doing here, and who are these women?

Saddam Hussein – Bibi, these ladies speak only English and Hebrew, so I shall ask you: who are they?

BN – Out.

SH – Not until we’ve discussed matters of strategic urgency. I’m sickened that you speak of imminent Iranian nuclear arms the same way in 2002 you lied about my inevitable access to world-withering nukes. Here, take a look at yourself on the flat screen. You’ve put on a few pounds.

BN – You’re hardly the ultimate specimen. And for your edification, I wasn’t lying. Like President George W. Bush, your conqueror, I was bamboozled by faulty intelligence.

SH – Before further examining your exercise in exaggeration, let me congratulate you for deft political maneuvering. While Israeli housing prices skyrocket, forcing most young people to rent, and the Palestinians suffer under eternal occupation made worse by ever more illegal settlements, you’ve forced people around the world to focus on your assertion that Iran and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are the Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler of the twenty-first century.

BN – Thank you for acknowledging I used politics to shape public perceptions. You never swayed anyone without hammer and fist. Furthermore, I have no doubt, and neither do most civilized people, that – had you possessed them – you would have used nuclear weapons against Israel.

SH – Many a military blunder I’ve made, Bibi, but never would I have tried to nuke a nation armed with one or two hundred existential warheads. And have you forgotten, I was backed in the eighties by the righteous United States, your eternal benefactor, during my courageous war against the satanic hordes of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

BN – You started that war, and hundreds of thousands died on both sides.

SH – Your sole regret, I’m sure, is that our mutual casualties didn’t soar into the millions.

BN – I resent that.

SH – That our casualties weren’t higher?

BN – I exaggerate not a whit in asserting you would’ve been Hitler, or your hero Stalin, if you’d wielded their power.

SH – What a man of steel, that Stalin. He certainly wouldn’t have tolerated a renegade Jewish state, or any other carnivorous entity, in his sphere of influence.

BN – So you acknowledge your intrinsic evil.

SH – I played by the rules in my time and in my region. Now, back to you, Bibi. I hold the transcript of your speech tonight, and note you’re still quite the ass-kisser. Much insincere praise for your political adversary, Barack Obama. Praise for the Congress. Thanks to America. Warm feelings for your “friends” who filled the legislative chamber.

What did you offer them? The most specious history lesson I’ve heard. Twenty-five hundred years ago a Persian named Haman “plotted to destroy the Jewish people.” And today you claim, “The Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us.”

BN – The Ayatollah Khamenei, as I noted, “spews the oldest hatred of anti-Semitism with the newest technology. He tweets that Israel must be annihilated.”

SH – Khamenei’s not my favorite, either, but in his behalf I must explain he’s not talking about the physical destruction of Israel but the political dismantling of the brutal Zionist state.

BN – He knows there can be no dismantling of the Jewish state without destroying us, and he’s dreaming that anyone in this region can do so. That’s why he craves nuclear weapons.

SA – Then why are your three intelligence chiefs publicly convinced that Iranians are rational and have no wish to be involved in nuclear self-annihilation?

BN – They’re wrong and I’m right.

SH – No, they’re not soon running for reelection and you are.

BN – My reelection bid is irrelevant, and only a crass and cynical man would suggest otherwise.

SH – And only the most egregious of liars would blame Iran “for killing and maiming thousands of American service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.” American lives were lost in Iraq because, in 2003 and thereafter, we and our allies resisted criminal aggression.

You’re also quite slippery in your Hitler metaphor that “Iran is busy gobbling up nations.” Iran has gobbled up no one. It has occasionally struck in ways you call terroristic but were far less bloody and sustained than U.S. assaults on the civilian populations of Iraq and Vietnam.

As I stressed, you can’t fool your own intelligence chiefs about Iranian intentions and projected capabilities, and you’re certainly not hoodwinking many others, outside the U.S. Congress. You say the current multinational negotiation, which involves China and Russia, is a bad deal that “would leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure, providing it with a short break-out time to the bomb.”

In fact, Bibi, these facilities would be closely monitored by the United States and other powers, and Iranian compliance would be enforced. If there is no deal, then there will be no surveillance cameras, no inspections, and no verification. Admit it. You don’t want Iran to have its own domestic nuclear program, which the Non-Proliferation Treaty entitles it to. By the way, why didn’t Israel sign the NPT?

BN – Israel is above discussion of such matters. I want my nation and my people to survive. I acknowledged that the current deal would impose restrictions “on Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s adherence to those restrictions would be supervised by international inspectors.” But that’s not good enough. “Inspectors document violations, they don’t stop them. Inspectors knew when North Korea broke to the bomb, but that didn’t stop anything.” And even if Iran complied now, it would be free to “hide and cheat” in ten years.

SH – In regard to nuclear weapons, Israel is without peer in hiding and cheating.

BN – Only to deter aggression. We’ve never used nuclear weapons.

SH – For that, I must commend you.

BN – I ask only three things of Iran, which by and large is comprised of great people. “First, stop its aggression against its neighbors in the Middle East. Second, stop supporting terrorism around the world. And third, stop threatening to annihilate my country.”

SH – Bibi, I think Iran would agree to those terms if Israel stops repressing Gaza and the West Bank. A less aggressive Israel would undercut complaints of adversaries throughout the Arab and Persian worlds.

BN – Saddam, may I speak confidentially?

SH – But of course.

BN – I just don’t think Arabs and Persians can be trusted, not after thousands of years of perfidy.

SH – We have no reason to trust Israel and its annexationist regime.

BN – We seek only peace and harmony in a troubled world.

SH – I’ll help you forge the deal. My influence is still great.

BN – Do you swear you wouldn’t have attacked Israel if you’d had nukes?

SH – I solemnly swear.

BN – Nevertheless, I fear you want a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

SH – Absolutely untrue.

BN – Let’s leave it there for now.

SH – Where have you hidden the ladies?