Israel Matzav

The biggest obstacle to getting tough on Tehran

The biggest obstacle to really getting tough on Tehran is none other than Barack Obama says Arizona Republican Senator John Kyl.

There is no deferential cushion attached to his message: “The president,” the senator has said, “must drop his obstruction of and halt his efforts to water down the tough new sanctions on Iran that Congress is considering.”

The accusation is biting and far-reaching.

The tough new sanctions the senator says the White House is trying to soften are contained in a bill that a House-Senate conference committee wants completed by the end of May. If you consider that an eventual fourth round of United Nations Security Council sanctions is unlikely to scare the mullahs, then Congress’s version — hard-edged or a softball — will serve as an essential marker to the world of American intentions on Iran.

Mr. Kyl comes to the Iran issue from a career anchored in another area of security affairs.

He is one of the most articulate voices in Congress on nuclear security and nonproliferation issues, heading the Senate’s National Security Working Group. It is this badge of influence and his reputation for a lack of interest in polemics that give weight to the Arizona Republican’s assertion that Mr. Obama has given away more than a year “with nothing to show for it” — not excepting a still-to-be-ratified Start nuclear arms treaty of questionable significance that he says magnifies an indecisive or even wobbling approach on Iran.

In a conversation last week, Mr. Kyl said: “The administration’s focus on Start is misplaced. The president says nuclear proliferation and terrorism are America and the world’s greatest concerns. So why would he focus so much attention elsewhere rather than deal with the Iranian problem?”

He gave his own answer: “They, the administration, would say that by leading the way with arms control, it will be easier to persuade the rest of the world to go along with us. That may be persuasive in a university setting but it doesn’t work in reality.

“It’s not as if the real world would say, ‘We agree with you and we’ll impose crippling sanctions on Iran.”’

Mr. Kyl, sounding bipartisan, argued that an American problem about imposing sufficiently tough sanctions to affect Iran began with the inadequate response of George W. Bush.

But referring to Mr. Obama, he said, “If you want to avoid military action, then you throw all your energy into sanctions.”

Read the whole thing. It sounds like Congress has had it with the Obumbler.

You have to wonder why God put this moron in office at this time. It's not pretty.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:29 AM