Obama Administration Works Congress To Ease US Iran Sanctions - While Backing UN's Israel Investigation

Rush Limbaugh was apparently correct - The way for Israel to be treated better by Obama is to change its name to Iran.

In view of the farcical UN 'sanctions' the Obama Administration managed to get through after months of misplaced diplomacy, the US Congress has come up with its own legislative proposals for US sanctions on Iran that actually mean something.

And the White House's response? Pressuring Congress to water them down:

The Obama administration, which labored for months to impose tough new United Nations sanctions against Iran, now is pushing in the opposite direction against Congress as it crafts U.S. sanctions that the White House fears may go too far.

Administration officials have begun negotiations with congressional leaders, who are working on versions of House and Senate bills that would punish companies that sell refined petroleum products to Iran or help the country's oil industry {...}

U.S. sanctions have strong support in Congress, and the administration backs them in principle as a way to strengthen the mild strictures adopted on Wednesday by the U.N. Security Council.

But the administration fears that the legislation also could damage relations with Europe, Russia and China, all of whom cooperated with U.S. efforts on the U.N. sanctions.

To avoid that possibility, the administration wants authority to waive U.S. punishment against companies from countries that have cooperated on Iran.

Many lawmakers are wary. Some say the Obama administration, like its predecessors, has been lax in enforcing existing Iran sanctions out of concern for good relations with other world powers.

"The administration doesn't carry out the laws that are on the books, and they want the new law to be as weak and loophole-ridden as possible," said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), who has been pushing for years for such legislation.

Republicans have been ratcheting up their demands for Congress to hang tough, arguing that the U.N. resolution fell short of what was needed.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the U.N. sanctions a "goose egg" and demanded that Congress impose "crippling sanctions against Iran."

Russia already has warned that penalizing Russian companies "could lead to retaliatory measures."

Russia said Thursday that it intends to go ahead with sales to Iran of a highly sophisticated surface-to-air missile that has been a source of U.S. concern.

There are serious issues with Europe, as well. Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, reminded Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in a recent letter that U.S. officials agreed in 1998 not to hit European companies with sanctions for doing business with Iran.

Of course, when it comes to Israel the story is very different:

Senior Obama administration officials have been telling foreign governments that the administration intends to support an effort next week at the United Nations to set up an independent commission, under UN auspices, to investigate Israel's behavior in the Gaza flotilla incident. The White House has apparently shrugged off concerns from elsewhere in the U.S. government that a) this is an extraordinary singling out of Israel, since all kinds of much worse incidents happen around the world without spurring UN investigations; b) that the investigation will be one-sided, focusing entirely on Israeli behavior and not on Turkey or on Hamas; and c) that this sets a terrible precedent for outside investigations of incidents involving U.S. troops or intelligence operatives as we conduct our own war on terror.

While UN Ambassador Susan Rice is reported to have played an important role in pushing for U.S. support of a UN investigation, the decision is, one official stressed, of course the president's. The government of Israel has been consulting with the U.S. government on its own Israeli investigative panel, to be led by a retired supreme court justice, that would include respected international participants, including one from the U.S. But the Obama administration is reportedly saying that such a “kosher panel” is not good enough to satisfy the international community, or the Obama White House.

That UN led investigation by the infamous Human rights Commission is going to be a real doozy, with Turkey and Iran leading the pack.

Just to reassure these paragons of human rights that the 'investigation' was going to be conducted without even a pretense of impartiality, the resolution stated: "the Human Rights Council ... condemns in the strongest terms the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces."

And that was before any 'investigating had even been done.

The thing is, I think Obama actually believes that a nuclear Iran is less of a problem than Israel. That's how far off of reality things have gotten.

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