In an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday, September 23, President Obama correctly described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's endless chatter about Iran as "noise."
At the same time, the Obama administration took the MEK off the U.S. terror list, a bizarre move that has been criticized by pro-peace activists in America and Iran.
The MEK is widely acknowledged as a terrorist cult that has no legitimacy in Iran because it sided with Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran in the 1980s.
Read Glenn Greenwald's article about the U.S. getting in bed with the MEK called, "Five lessons from the de-listing of MEK as a terrorist group." Read Richard Silverstein's take on it here. And read "By Delisting the MEK, the Obama Administration is Taking the Moral and Strategic Bankruptcy of America’s Iran Policy to a New Low," by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett.
Is President Obama trying to play both sides of the fence in the Iran-Israel confrontation? On one hand he rightly dismisses Netanyahu's fanciful rhetoric as "noise" and on the other hand he submissively gives in to Israeli hardliners, handing them everything they seek in the U.S. political sphere.
Checking the MEK off of the comical U.S. terror list was a goal of the Israel Lobby, and they got what they wanted, at the cost of destroying America's narrative on Iran. This proves that the only difference in the approach to Iran between Israel and the United States comes down to words, not actions; strategy, not aims.
Unleashing the MEK is the latest proof that President Obama is fine with using terrorism against civilians to achieve U.S. political aims. Despite his rhetoric, Obama is committed to war against Iran, just not on Netanyahu's timetable.
