Obama to Iran: Enjoy Your Nukes

Barack Obama and his minions — Hillary Clinton, who these days disses Israel every chance she gets, and Ambassador Howard Gutman, who thinks Islamic anti-Semitism began at a Tel Aviv falafel shop a week ago Thursday — love to put pressure on our supposed ally ... but on Iran's despicable mullahs, not so much.

So it should be no surprise that our president is pushing back on last week's Senate 100-0 vote (how often does that happen?) for stronger sanctions on Iran.

What's behind this? The mind drifts to two key events of recent years:

First, and most obviously, the extraordinary silence of Barack Obama during the Iranian democracy demonstrations — one of the more emotionally disconnected displays of any modern president. Every decent person in the Western world was rooting for the demonstrators to rid themselves of the mullahs, except for our president, who didn't even give them moral support, preferring to do his own absurd and self-centered negotiation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Second is the2003 going-away party and Israel bash, with Obama in attendance, for pro-Palestinian professor Rashid Khalidi, recorded on a videotape still sequestered in a vault at the Los Angeles Times. The Times, which was quite willing to run the Wikileaks, is withholding it for reasons that have long since become unviable.

Which side are you on, as the old song goes.

Iranian nukes don't really seem to matter to Barack Obama.

He pays lip service, on occasion, to what a bad idea they are, but not nearly the lip service paid by his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to how bad the Israelis are.

And now, with the chips down and the Congress willing to act, Obama says nay. Well, what could be more obvious? The game is fixed. A little espionage around the edges is OK, but if anyone wants to do anything serious, like having genuine sanctions as opposed to phony (show) sanctions, this administration backs away.

The excuse is that our European friends are dependent on Iranian oil and playing an even worse double-game than we are — and we have to cooperate with our allies, no? Leave aside for a moment that this administration could help solve this problem by opening the spigots here.

How do you think this is viewed in Tehran? When the mullahs see our president trying to get Congress to scale down the sanctions, do they think their nuclear facilities are in any real danger from this man?

And what about the prime minister of Israel? What is he supposed to think when observing this, while listening to the endless nattering from the administration about peace talks with an adversary that has demonstrated no interest in peace.

No wonder the administration is nervous about the Israelis acting on their own. They should be. To find out more about Roger L. Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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