A pair of statements about an hour apart on Monday by two top Obama administration officials give a clear if jarring look into the funhouse mirror that is current U.S. policy towards Iran and Israel. The two comments are recorded by CNN senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta on his Twitter account:
[img nocaption float=”center” width=”640″ height=”342″ render=”<%photoRenderType%>”]24699[/img]
Here are White House chief of staff Denis McDonough’s comments, made at the J Street annual conference, in fuller context:
Over at the State Department, spokesperson Marie Harf piled on, despite clarification and even apologies from Netanyahu for some of his pre-election remarks:
On the other hand, Ayatollah Khamenei’s Nowruz (Iranian New Year) message called for “Death to America” even as he voiced support for the ongoing nuclear negotiations, blaming the U.S. in advance if the talks fail. Rather than read this dichotomy as a reason to doubt Iran’s sincerity (John Kerry, after all, said that we have “great respect” for the religious importance of the Ayatollah’s elusive anti-nuke fatwa), White House press secretary Josh Earnest simply sees this as all the more reason to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran. And as CNN reported (via Josh Kraushaar), the White House just sees the “Death to America” talk as “intended for a domestic political audience,” not the first time the Obama administration has used that excuse for Iran.
Even for veterans observers of middle eastern politics it must be disorienting to witness the benefit of the doubt extended to the worst state sponsor of terrorism whose “Supreme Leader” wishes “Death to America”, while this nation’s closest ally in the Middle East (and also a target of death wishes by Iran’s supreme leader) is met with the wounded lament, “I think we just don’t know what to believe at this point.” Given these responses, the Unites States may not be the only country to “re-evaluate our approach to the peace process.”
