Political analysts have described foreign policy as one of President Obama’s advantages over Mitt Romney in the presidential election. This has been backed up by some polls. But in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday, Obama displayed a remarkably passive attitude regarding the collapse of his Middle East policy and Israel’s fears about Iran’s march to build a nuclear weapon.

Asked by Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” about whether he felt pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to draw clearer lines about Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Obama brushed such concerns aside. “I am going to block out any noise that’s out there,” he said. That’s the answer one might expect to a question about poll numbers, not about Iran’s regime pursuing nuclear weapons and vowing to wipe Israel — America’s strongest and most dependable ally in the Middle East — off the map.