When it comes to the safety of the world, there is absolutely no doubt that every effort should be made to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

But Iran isn't alone on that list. When it comes to nuclear weapons, Iran, Israel and hypocrisy are all wrapped up together.

Iran is a rogue state that uses faux-Democracy and rigged elections to create the perception of freedom. Iranians are allowed to vote and elect candidates approved by the Ayatollahs, who have lesser powers.

Iran's leaders have openly backed not just violence but extreme violence including suicide bombings by young children, the destruction of peace in the Middle East and disrupting neighbor states including Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

Iran is a threat to the entire Middle East, but it's "elected" leaders embrace lace-curtain diplomacy, the appearance of civility that their colleagues, like the late dictator Saddam Hussein, lacked.

Syria's Bashar al-Assad is also a lace-curtain tyrant, a phony teetotaler in expensive tailored suits who shuns the Fidel Castro military khakis of his father and predecessors. He showcases his wife the way President John F. Kennedy put the spotlight on Jacqueline Kennedy 50 years ago, nurturing political capitol in the eyes of the public.

But Asma al-Assad is no Jackie Kennedy, and is a partner in a Middle East mafia crime conspiracy of stolen wealth and oppression.

Iran is too religious to turn to wife-showcasing, however. Their extremism is demonstrated in how their people live. In Iran, the women are bullied into smothering their identities in burqas. But when they cross the Arabian Sea (they call it the Persian Gulf, which I reject) burqa'd Iranian women immediately shed their clothing for Western garb.

I saw this amazing expression of freedom myself at the Dubai airport. Thousands of women disembarking from Iranian planes and rushing to the women's lounges to change into more flashy, Western garb, a fashion deemed and beautiful in the eyes of the "Great Satan" they have been taught to hate.

"Great Satan" is how Iran refers to America, a bastion of its own double standards and hypocrisy. Human and civil rights are violated all the time in America, but the process involves little or no violence. In America, if they hate you, they ostracize you, exclude you, deny your rights and ignore you. If in your banishment from society you try to strike back by using violence, they put you in jail and label you a terrorist.

Israel is modeled after America, although, honestly, I don't know which one is the mini-me of the other, Israel or America? Modeled after America, Israel has one significant difference: Israel embraces a form of racist discrimination just short of apartheid, a term Israel's emotionally enraged and ineffective critics scream and trumpet ad nauseam.

Israel also has nuclear weapons. But the United States, since 1970, refrains from pushing the issue because Kennedy's successor President Lyndon Baines Johnson was fearful if he made too much of Israel's nuclear capabilities back then, the Arab countries who did sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty would back out.

Every nation in the world has either signed or in some way agreed to the NPT except five nations, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and South Sudan. America is pressuring North Korea, more diplomatic with ally Pakistan and openly seeking to punish Sudan. But India and Israel are given a pass for political reasons.

Unlike Israel, Iran signed the NPT under then Western-backed tyrant and dictator Reza Pahlavi, " the last Shah of Iran," who took power in 1941. Even though the people of Iran finally rose up against his tyranny and ousted the Shah in 1979, the West continues to apply the NPT to Iran's radicalized religious megalomaniacs, the Ayatollahs. The ousted tyrant the Shah was protected by the West until his death.

The Shah came to power as a direct result of the United States CIA and Britain's MI6 intervening to imprison the Democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Why? Why else? Mosaddegh threatened to nationalize the oil companies. Mosaddegh was murdered while in prison three years later.

Oh, yes. Before democracy was sacked in Egypt earlier this year, it was eviscerated in Iran by the very country that today hypocritically cries for democracy for the people in the Middle East.

Israel is well aware of all of this history and has a specific strategy to deal with it. While the hapless lame duck President Barack Obama tries to orchestrate an agreement with Iran in the fashion of Neville Chamberlain who sought to appease the Nazis in 1938, Israel is using its clout to undermine Obama. Members of the U.S. Congress who are in Israel's back pocket are already pushing to block anything Obama does.

This hypocrisy is what allows Iran's dictators to survive in this world. Israel is the textbook of hypocrisy and double standards. It permits rogue nations like Iran and Syria to conduct themselves with such impunity.

In a fair balanced world, the West would actively push to free the people of Iran from the religious tyrants there. But in a fair and balanced world, they would push for Democracy and freedom and nuclear non-proliferation in Israel, too.

But this isn't a fair world. It never has been.

Ray Hanania is an award-winning Palestinian American columnist for the Saudi Gazette and the managing editor of The Arab Daily News at www.TheArabDailyNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @RayHanania. To find out more about Ray Hanania and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.