Barack Obama and his minions — Suha-bussing Hillary Clinton who disses Israel every chance she gets and Ambassador Howard Gutman who thinks Islamic anti-Semitism began at a Tel Aviv felafel shop a week ago Thursday (he should read Andrew Bostom) — 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 vote for stronger sanctions on Iran. Via Reuters:
The Obama administration is urging US lawmakers to soften proposed sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank, Senator Mark Kirk said on Tuesday.
Kirk, a Republican, is the co-author along with Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of a proposal to penalize foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank, the main conduit for its oil revenues.
The Senate approved the proposal last week 100-0 despite lobbying against it by Obama administration officials, who argued that threatening US allies might not be the best way to get cooperation in action against Iran. [bold mine]
A similar measure is pending in the House of Representatives; both chambers must agree on the same version before it can become law.
Kirk said on Tuesday that the administration had written to some lawmakers’ offices and “proposed what they describe as technical fixes” to the Kirk-Menendez amendment.
What’s behind this? The mind drifts back 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 Ahmadinejad.
Second is the 2003 going-away party and Israel bash, with Obama in attendance, for 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 not been viable for some time.
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 okay, 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.
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