White House: Come to think of it, why rush into sanctions on Iran?

It's even worse than we thought. It's not just a matter of the Obama Administration trying to reimpose sanctions after Iran's missile test and finding that it's impossible because of the very agreement they insisted on negotiating. That was bad enough. But it turns out they don't even have the temerity to go that far. Once Iran conducted the offending missile test and the sanctions talk began, all that needed to happen was for Iran to let Obama and Kerry know: You impose sanctions, we'll go pedal to the metal with our missile program! How do you like that? And just as you might have expected, Obama and Kerry folded like cheap suits:

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The abrupt reversal by the administration came as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani publicly ordered his military to dramatically scale up the country’s missile program if the sanctions went ahead. Senior U.S. officials have told lawmakers the sanctions were delayed because of evolving diplomatic work between the White House and the Iranian government. Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama, on Saturday said the U.S. government has more diplomatic and technical work to do before imposing new sanctions. Still, the U.S. wouldn’t negotiate the imposition of sanctions with Iran, he said. “They don’t get a say on who we impose sanctions on,” Mr. Rhodes told reporters in Hawaii, where Mr. Obama has been vacationing. “We just have additional work that needs to be done.” The administration had notified Congress on Wednesday that it would impose new financial penalties on nearly a dozen companies and individuals for their alleged role in developing Iran’s ballistic missile program, but pulled back later that day.

The story goes on to say that Kerry has been in "almost constant contact" with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif - which directly contradicts the administration's claim that it would not negotiate with Iran on the nature of any sanctions. Or maybe it doesn't. They're probably not doing that so much as they're begging Iran to forgive them for ever hinting at sanctions in the first place. It's hard to find words for just how pathetic this is. Obama and Kerry have got it in their heads that Iran would have been behaving itself all these years if only their counterparts in Washington had treated them with goodwill and respect rather than as the bunch of criminal terrorist thugs they actually are. This is particular conceit is a Kerry special. He's convinced that dealing with America's enemies is something he alone can do because he has the enlightenment to see they are not really bad, just differently oriented or something, and he John Kerry alone understands this and knows how to deal with them. This is what that nonsense gets you. We give them a mile and they want to take the entire continent, since they have little reason to believe we will stop them. As hard as this may be to believe, I think Kerry may be an even worse Secretary of State than Hillary. She was completely inept, had terrible instincts and did little more than fly around so she could look busy. But at least her diplomatic philosophy was merely, "What will make me look presidential?" That's terrible, but it's not as troublesome as Kerry's, which is to prove our enemies are OK by giving them everything they want. Our enemies know weakness when they see it, and in the case of Iran, they're wasting no time exploiting it - to the surprise of no one except maybe Obama and Kerry. The rest of us know only too well what happens when you pander to killers.

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