WarSclerotic

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stated this week that Iran “will not allow any inspections of military sites by foreigners.” He also vowed to resist “coercion and excessive demands” on the part of a “brazen enemy,” meaning the U.S.

U.S. President Barack Obama was not overly concerned by those statements. A nuclear agreement with Iran is essentially a done deal as far as Obama is concerned, so Iranian rhetoric no longer carries any weight. So goes the thinking at the White House. In fact, Obama is much more perturbed by what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on election day some two months ago.

Speaking with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg this week, Obama went out of his way to castigate Netanyahu over an election day video message, in which he warned that “Arab voters are coming out in droves.” Even though the Israeli premier has already apologized for making this remark, Obama once again attacked him, preaching that Netanyahu’s message ran “contrary to the very language of the Israeli Declaration of Independence” and warning of “foreign policy consequences.”

Khamenei’s latest rhetorical gems, however, did not give Obama any pause. As usual, Khamenei’s comments always escape scrutiny in Obama’s world. In other words, Iran may continue being a rogue state that sponsors terrorism and propagates anti-Semitism. It can continue to destabilize Sunni Arab states and show its contempt toward American values and at the same time be completely trustworthy, because it is obviously a rational actor. The world can strike a deal with Iran with its eyes wide shut. But Netanyahu? That is something else. As far as Obama is concerned, he has been blacklisted. He will not be invited back to the White House, at least not anytime soon.

Finally! The root cause behind the Middle East’s many problems has been identified. It is not Iran, which is about to ink a deal with the West; it is not the Islamic State group, which is supposedly on the run, No! The real problem is Israel’s elected premier. Go democracy!

Obama’s interview with Goldberg had three different parts. The war against Islamic State, the nuclear deal with Iran, and Obama’s relations with the Jewish people and Israel.

Part I: The Islamic State group

This part of the interview demonstrated the extent of Obama’s detachment. Not only is he completely divorced from reality, he has also allowed his romantic views of the world shape his policies. This is very reminiscent of his conduct during the joyride called “The Arab Spring.” Oh, the good old days when Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi was the president of Egypt.

“No, I don’t think we’re losing,” Obama told Goldberg when he was asked about the war against Islamic State. And this was just as the Syrian city of Palmyra was about to be taken over by the group, and three days after the Iraqi city of Ramadi was conquered by its thugs. Obama’s excuse? “Ramadi had been vulnerable for a very long time, primarily because these are not Iraqi security forces that we have trained or reinforced.”

As of now, Islamic State controls half of Syria, but the regime has held on to the Damascus region. (Great. A terrorist regime versus a terrorist group.) But the important thing is that “we are not losing.” But it is Netanyahu’s remarks about the Arab voters (remember?) that will elicit “foreign policy consequences.” Obama doesn’t see any problems with the war against Islamic State, and that means that we have a big problem.

Part II: Iran

Obama is still young. That is why he told Goldberg, “Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this.” But Obama apparently forgot how he described the rationale for the deal just over a month ago. “So essentially, we’re purchasing for 13, 14, 15 years’ assurances that the breakout is at least a year,” Obama told NPR on April 7, right after he accidentally conceded that Iran’s advanced technology would eventually mean that “at that point the breakout times will have shrunk almost down to zero.”

This means history will judge Obama’s nuclear stance in 15 years time, and not, as he would like us to believe, in 20 years. That is what he himself has said.

Part III: Obama and Israel

“I want Israel, in the same way that I want the United States, to embody … what I believe are human or universal values that have led to progress over a millennium,” Obama said. “The same values that led to the end of Jim Crow and slavery. The same values that led to Nelson Mandela being freed and a multiracial democracy emerging in South Africa.”

Obama essentially compared apples and oranges. Israel’s policies are security-related, but in South Africa, racial segregation and apartheid were the goal itself.

It appears that Obama cannot bring himself to forgive Netanyahu for his election day video message on Arab voters. God may forgive, but Obama does not. So what if Obama called on Hispanic Americans to vote in droves to punish their Republican enemies in 2012? Just who are those enemies? Are they Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both of whom are of Cuban descent?

So what if Vice President Joe Biden warned that the Republicans will “put y’all back in chains” at a Virginia campaign rally attended by many African-Americans. So what if British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned of the dire consequences of an alliance between the nationalist Scots and the Labour Party. So what. It only matters when Netanyahu speaks.

Obama is nostalgic for an Israel of a distant era. The Israel of the kibbutzim. When Obama was in his teens, in the 1970s, the Israel he knew was defined by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and then-Prime Minster Golda Meir. In case you forgot, Mr. President, Meir was the one who said that “there is no Palestinian people. Has there ever been a Palestinian people that lived in its own country called Palestine? They were never a people.”

Had Netanyahu made the same comments, Obama would consider this a calamity. Perhaps even the apocalypse.