But the NYPD’s “covertly follow every single Muslim in the tri-state area” approach to counter-terrorism has its defenders. Like Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who believes Americans Muslims have the right to worship wherever they see fit so long as they don’t pay any attention to the unmarked vans parked across the street.

And the department argues that it is allowed to carry out surveillance wherever it chooses, because there’s no law against just going around looking at things and taking some pictures, right? No, of course not, unless you look sort of Middle Eastern.

The NYPD earlier this week announced that they had totally caught some people who were almost definitely probably Iranian spies. These spies were caught red-handed spying all over the place!

Authorities have interviewed at least 13 people since 2005 with ties to Iran’s government who were seen taking pictures of New York City landmarks, a senior New York Police Department official said Wednesday.

The NYPD’s Mitchell Silber told Congress that Hezbollah and Iran definitely want to blow up New York, and the proof is three incidents of people “associated with the Iranian government” getting caught photographing things, in New York. (I am not much of a terrorist, but if you want pictures of New York City landmarks in order to figure out how best to blow them up why not try Flickr? There are hundreds of thousands of photos of every landmark in the city already online!)

While other so-called intelligence experts say ” there are no known or specific threats indicating Iranian plans to attack inside the U.S.,” Long Island-based Islamaphobe Republican Congressman Peter King and documented supporter of terrorism wants us all to be on high alert, because Hezbollah is everywhere:

Opening the hearing, King said, “We have a duty to prepare for the worst,” warning there may be hundreds of Hezbollah operatives in the United States, including 84 Iranian diplomats at the United Nations and in Washington who, “it must be presumed, are intelligence officers.”

Stop telling the NYPD not to spy on all the Muslims, everywhere! If they don’t keep tabs on all of them, the Iranians will get us!

Hadley was speaking at a panel at the University of Maryland, alongside former Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski went further, saying that even if Iran did obtain nuclear weapons, it could be contained. According to Brzezinski, who was the top policymaker during the time of the Iran revolution and hostage crisis in 1979 and 1980, a nuclear Iran is something the world can live with. “Deterrence needs to be given a chance to work,” he said. “The Iranians are devious, but they are not suicidal.”

The panel was moderated by Shibley Telhami, a veteran pollster and scholar on the Middle East. Telhami released a poll finding that only one in four Americans favor Israel conducting a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program. Close to 70 percent favor the U.S. and other major powers continuing to pursue negotiations with Iran, a position that is supported by majorities of Republicans (58 percent), Democrats (79 percent) and Independents (67 percent). The poll, conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, found only 14 percent of respondents said the U.S. should encourage Israel to strike Iran’s program. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, said, “One of the reasons Americans are so cool toward the idea of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear program is that most believe that it is not likely to produce much benefit.”

Brzezinski agreed heartily. “We have no idea how such a war would end,” he said. “Iran has military capabilities, it could retaliate by destabilizing Iraq.”

Hadley was much more worried about the consequences of a nuclear Iran. “Iran is different than North Korea, which is more inward-directed,” he said. “I worry that they would be more ambitious in support of terrorism and that other countries” in the region would also want nuclear weapons. Still, Hadley believes that the Obama administration has been pursuing the right approach with Iran, focusing on sanctions instead of opting for military action. Even if covert action or taking other approaches to delaying Iran’s nuclear weapons program only worked for two or three years, that would be worth it, he said.

“The Iranian public is watching what is going on in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya,” he said. Delaying a military strike may offer a chance for something to change in Iran, either through diplomacy or through the leadership’s reconsideration of its foreign-affairs approach. He believes Iran’s recent agreement to nuclear talks came as a result of increasing pressure on the regime.

Brzezinski is worried about a situation whereby Iran is forced to choose between a humiliating retreat and crippling sanctions. Such an ultimatum offers no chance for the regime to take a face-saving retreat, similar to how the Soviet Union was granted concessions in return for removing its missiles from Cuba during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. “The Israelis have been predicting since 1994 every year that Iran will have nuclear weapons the next year,” he said. While the United States has a rightful moral obligation toward Israel, Brzezinski said, offering it protection under America’s nuclear umbrella and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are the best way to integrate it permanently into the international community.

In contrast to some top Republicans, Hadley said that America should engage with Islamist and Muslim political parties that have gained power in Egypt and elsewhere. “Just because they have the word ‘Islamic’ or ‘Muslim’ in the name — we should be pushing them to pursue pluralism,” he said.

Hadley’s comments are a marker of how top Bush administration official have been chastened by the Iraq disaster. With the important exception of Cheney and Rumsfeld, all seem to admit that the war did not go as planned — to the extent that it was planned). One of the few good things to come out of the Iraq war is that it has cautioned American leaders against starting another.

In a rhetorical style that was less hostile than usual, Ayatollah Khamenei hailed Obama’s comments as “good words” and called them “an exit from delusion.” Meanwhile, his nuclear negotiator, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, resumed talks in Vienna over Iran’s controversial nuclear program with five western powers including China for the first time in more than a year. He called the talks “a new chapter.”

Both seemed to be efforts to divert threats at a time when hawks in Israel are beating the drums of war and calling for a military strike as soon as spring to stop Iran from making a nuclear bomb. Sanctions are crippling Iran’s economy and the value of its currency, the rial, has plunged since fall to half against the U.S. dollar.  

It is too early to take Ayatollah Khamenei’s comments as an overture to the West. “I think we have to wait and see if anything will come out of the nuclear talks,” said Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “So far he just seemed glad that war is not imminent.”

The victory of Ayatollah Khamenei’s supporters in the March 2 elections has, at least symbolically, solidified his authority. According to official figures, his supporters won 75 percent of the seats. The fate of the remaining 65 seats in the 290-member assembly will be decided in run-off elections.

The fact that supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won only 2 seats, compared to 70 percent of the seats in 2008, is being interpreted as nothing but a clear victory for Ayatollah Khamenei.

Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final word on state matters, has made Ahmadinejad a target after he challenged his authority. The president tried to reopen relations with the United States, despite opposition from the supreme leader, believing that rapprochement with the West would be popular with Iranian electorate. He appointed his supporters to key ministries that had been historically controlled by the supreme leader. Ayatollah Khamenei lashed back late last year and publically embarrassed the president by reappointing the Intelligence Minister whom Ahmadinejad had fired.

The elections were not only about sidelining Ahmadinejad, but also restoring the prestige and an image of strength to the supreme leader. In the days before the election, Ayatollah Khamenei was concerned only with turn out. The elections were the first since the 2009 presidential race that triggered massive anti-regime protests. Khamenei had gone to extreme lengths to support Ahmadinejad against pro-reform forces that demanded more political and social openness.

Before the vote this month, Ayatollah Khamenei urged people to vote in large numbers to “smack the face” of the enemies, a reference to Israel and the United States. His supporters equated low turnout with an invitation for a military strike, because a low turnout would project an image of weakness at a time when the country had come under increasing threats.

The opposition movement that drew hundreds of thousands into the streets boycotted the election and urged its supporters to stay away from the polls. Their candidates were banned from running and their leaders have been under house arrest for the past year.

No independent reporting confirmed the 64 percent turnout. The regime boasted that it was an “epic victory,” compared to 57 percent that voted in parliamentary votes in 2008. Foreign reporters were not allowed to roam freely and were bused to specific polling stations where they were greeted with enthusiastic voters.

Apathy among the large middle-class generated almost no citizen journalism except for calls from Iran to a call-in program on BBC Persian Service that was beamed into Iran on satellite. Callers said the polling places in Tehran and large cities were deserted.

The contrasting numbers that the government released in the early hours of the count failed to convince people it was different from the 2009 election that was widely viewed as fraudulent. One government official put the turnout at 34 percent while the Interior Minister, Mostafa Najar, said it was 64 percent. Eventually, the Interior Ministry, which was counting the votes, deleted the turnout figure all together from its website. The semi-official news agency, Mehr, even reported the total number of votes as being higher than the number of eligible voters in a small city of Ilam.

Although there were no immediate claims of irregularities, it was Ahmadinejad’s younger sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad, who vowed this time that she would make formal complaints of fraud in her hometown of Garmsar where she lost to a rival candidate.

As for Ahmadinejad, he will become the first president next week in the Islamic regime to be summoned before parliament to answer MP’s questions over alleged mismanagement. The move has been seen as an effort to curb his power. In another blow, the Guardian Council, a watchdog body close to Ayatollah Khamenei, blocked the president from setting up a committee responsible for supervising the implementation of the constitution. The committee would have given Ahmadinejad more leverage to ensure that, as president, he was given all the power the constitution granted him.

But for Payman Maadi, the star of “A Separation,” it feels a little like home. Los Angeles, he says, is in many ways just like Tehran. He’s here for the Academy Awards, which are quintessentially Los Angeles. But Tehran, of course, is nothing like the Academy Awards; the transitive property does not apply here.

So when I see Maadi dead asleep in the passenger seat just before the Oscars, I see the exhausting wear of Los Angeles — the city takes an unsuspected toll on an Iranian who runs a luxury watch shop in the country’s capital, and now finds himself in the throes of the movie industry’s biggest night.

Before falling into slumber, he recounted the night before, throwing out such names as Meryl Streep, who cornered Maadi and the film’s writer/director Asghar Farhadi to rave about “A Separation,” the foreign-language powerhouse film that was everyone’s Oscar pool gimme.

“She could recite every line,” he says of Streep. “She was crying during the [Independent Spirit Awards] montage, I swear.” Since arriving in Hollywood, Maadi has been cornered by almost every bold-faced name in the business, people who have come to view his film as a unique window into the realities of Iranian life; a reality that, usually funneled through the 24-hour news cycle, rarely comes to light. This week, like every other, the GOP primary race is filled with talk of war; headlines wonder whether Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear weapons program before the U.S. election.

But that’s not the kind of talk Maadi hears.

“[Streep] pulled me aside, and just told me how moved she was by the vision of realistic Iranian life. ‘It’s just one house. One house and you just see who is in there and what they are like, who they are.’ She was so moved. That’s when you realize you’ve done something special.”

Minutes later, my car mate, Katrin, one of Maadi’s childhood friends, is standing with him outside the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel when a car drives by, honking in some abstract show of support. He waves in thanks, and Katrin follows his lead, out of Hollywood-influenced instinct.

“I bet they thought I was Leila Hatami,” she says, referring to the female lead opposite Maadi in “A Separation,” and one of Iran’s leading actresses.

“No, they knew you weren’t her.”

“How do you know?”

“You weren’t wearing a chador.”

- – - – - -

For all its success, its hype, its all-but-guaranteed-Oscar chatter, “A Separation” is plagued with a curious bout of political silence. During the press circuit, neither the actors, nor the film’s writer/director, ever made mention of the narrative housing any political subtext — aware as they may have been that any film that reaches American shores from Iran is sure to be embalmed in politics long after it has left theaters. If a country of present-day notoriety produces any work of art, it becomes a victim of context — that might finally answer why North Korea has yet to produce a steady influx of romantic comedies.

Of course, the debate regarding “A Separation’s” politics has fallen into two distinct camps: that either the film is about something more intimate like family, and forgoes politics entirely; or the film is in fact rife with the country’s complex political landscape, but Farhadi and Maadi are simply not allowed to admit it.

The former requires the subjectively trained eye of a cinephile; the latter is a just matter of common sense. The politics of the film itself becomes gradually irrelevant as one begins to realize the politics of everything that’s come after it.

- – - – - -

“You walk into a restaurant, and you see Leonardo DiCaprio sitting beside you, and [Meryl Streep] sitting in front of you, and you give yourself 20 seconds of awe, and then it’s done,” says Maadi. “You don’t really look at them anymore. What makes these moments so incredible is that you go in thinking you’re there to see them, but they’re really there to see you.”

They’ve heard it all: Steven Spielberg said that he believed “A Separation” to be the best film of the year by a wide margin. David Fincher spent over half an hour discussing his various takes on the film’s complex technical scope. Brad Pitt took Maadi aside during a press conference to describe his intense reaction to the film’s opening scene, which caused his wife (maybe you’ve heard of her) to pause the film and return to it days later.

Angelina Jolie later cornered Farhadi at the awards, telling him that she longed to star in his next film. He thanked her, but politely made mention that, unfortunately, the female lead speaks only French.

Jolie told him she would learn the language by the first day of shooting.

But even after months on the circuit, it’s still hard for Maadi to shake the shock of having Hollywood’s most notable faces and filmmakers sing their praises. Woody Allen didn’t let his infamous shtick of never attending the Academy Awards stop him from reaching out to Farhadi and Maadi, asking for even 30 minutes of their time once they arrived in New York. Allen would eventually go on to claim the Oscar for best original screenplay from Farhadi, who, to everyone’s surprise, nabbed the fifth spot in the category — a rarity for non-English language films.

Allen’s consistent absence from the awards season racket begins to make sense to Maadi, as exhaustion once again sets in. We’re now on our way to a party hosted by Sony at the Andaz Hotel, and Farhadi has just texted saying he won’t be attending, citing sickness and overexhaustion. Maadi, who had planned on staying for an hour at most, and was even toying with not going altogether, is now obligated to stand in as the film’s representative; he’s just become the only member of the production in attendance.

The dinner is set to begin at 7:30, and by 7:15, after a bout with a passive aggressively calm GPS voice, we’ve finally pulled over on Culver Boulevard to call Maadi’s assistant to ask where exactly we’re going. Tension in the car has gotten significantly higher — the sort of anxiety that comes from worrying about arriving late to an event that one doesn’t even want to arrive at. Maadi’s wife, Faranak, is on the phone. Payman asks repeatedly for her to make sure the address gets texted as a precaution, but she hangs up before answering. “Faranak, why don’t you listen to anybody,” he snaps. “I asked you repeatedly to get the address texted. Do a job right, we may forget the address now.”

Suddenly we pass the Laemmle Royal theater on Santa Monica Boulevard and the tension in the car eases. The marquee features Payman and Leila’s face.

Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Film.

Maadi’s phone rings for roughly the fifth time in the last hour. He presses silent. The car keeps moving.

- – - – - -

By 11 p.m., we’ve arrived at some bar in some micro-sector of West Hollywood, with Maadi’s entire Persian posse in toe. The plan — as seems to be the theme — was to arrive earlier, but due to Iranian social requirements (meaning that the minute a restaurant is mentioned, suddenly cousins one never knew existed chime in about the best ambience for a late-night bar), it’s later than anticipated. The line outside the club and accompanying restaurant is longer than most of the skirts that the women waiting outside seem to be wearing, but Maadi leads us to the front, where, almost without a word, we are ushered in immediately. Once inside, I lose sight of him, but find him later surrounded by a gaggle of men and women, all of whom are giving him handshakes and high fives. Some, it is clear, he has seen before or known for longer; others seem to be treating him like an old acquaintance, even though he has yet to learn their names. Most call this the belly of the beast.

Aside from the already established A-list, no newcomer is probably reeling from face-recognition quite like Maadi. Considering that the Iranian population of L.A. ranges upward of 800,000, it has officially become the second largest such population in the world (second only to Iran itself). Because of this, “A Separation” finds itself as the reason all of L.A. is salivating: its two biggest industries — Hollywood and ‘Tehrangeles’ itself — both have equal stake in the film’s success. This makes Maadi perhaps the most recognizable person in the city to have never appeared on an American magazine cover.

“There is a different expectation from [Sony Pictures] for just what a foreign film has to do, has to look like to the people,” Maadi says. “The press can’t catch you behaving typical Hollywood. You have to uphold a certain distinction.”

This also has to do with the risk of losing it all. Should he be seen cavorting with a scantily clad woman, or with a drink in his hand, or with a face made red from too much liquor and a tie made loose by very much the same, the consequences would be dire.

Just three years ago, Jafar Panahi, one of the most influential filmmakers to come out of the Iranian new wave, was arrested while mourning at the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan, the woman whose death during the 2009 Iranian election protests drew international attention after a bystander filmed and released footage on the Internet of her laying bloodied on the streets. Over the course of the next two years, Panahi would be in and out of prison, culminating in a six-year jail sentence, and a 20-year ban on making any films, writing any screenplays, talking to Iranian media or leaving the country.

Events like this make the notion of a political film meaningless. Partly because any film to be made and released under such constraints inherently becomes a political act already, but also because Maadi and Farhadi could have made a real-time depiction of Ahmadinejad stealing the election and killing Neda himself, and come interviews would still have no choice but to claim that political readings are up for interpretation.

Maybe that’s the real belly of the beast.

- – - – - -

We move the table full of food against the back wall to make room for the friends and family that keep pouring into Maadi and Faranak’s L.A. apartment. He and Farhadi are currently taking their seats in the former Kodak Theatre. Plus ones don’t arrive for the Oscars unless you’re the kind of star Ryan Seacrest wants to ask about which designer made your dress. Faranak is unable to attend, leaving her to mingle with us commoners, holding our breaths to witness what was by then considered inevitable.

“This moment is so much bigger than him, he has no idea,” a friend of his sitting next to me says.

“I think he realizes the sort of excitement Iran is feeling right now. I don’t think he’s been going through this unaware of what a win could mean.”

“No, no, I mean what happens after this is so much bigger than him. I mean what happens to everyone else. What starts coming from Iran.”

“Do you mean ‘what starts coming out of Iran or coming out about Iran’?”

Before she can answer me, Sandra Bullock is onstage, and begins to read the nominees for best foreign film. Faranak’s hands go to her head, simultaneously covering her ears and alleviating pressure from her head. The room falls silent, and with the sort of focus everyone in the room had on the television, somehow Bullock’s every word came through more clear, more crisp, simply because the absence of movement acted as a speaker.

Moments later, Iran had won its first Academy Award. Farhadi was onstage, while Maadi and the rest of the film’s cast sat in support. They had decided hours earlier that the best way to remedy what many saw as a weak speech at the Golden Globes would be to pre-write the speech and allow Farhadi to deliver it himself.

I proudly offer this award to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment.

The champagne is flowing; the tears more so. Phones explode, with many calls to Iran announcing the news. Faranak dabs her eyes with a mascara-covered tissue as tears keep streaming. Everyone is hugging her, and she finally catches her breath.

“Do you think they will get in trouble for the speech?”

- – - – - -

When the sun rises on the other side of the globe, and Iran hears the news, banners featuring Farhadi holding the golden statue are erected all over Tehran.

“People in Iran follow the Oscars a lot more than you think they do,” Farhadi told reporters backstage. “I know for a fact that right now, as the event is happening, it’s in the middle of the night, in the middle of the morning, and people are not sleeping. I know they are following.”

By the end of the day, two things will have happened. Farhadi’s speech will have been altered on the Web to include a mention of the nuclear stalemate between Iran and other world powers, reading:

“I proudly offer this award to the people of my country who, despite all the tensions and hostility of recent months between Iran and the West over Iran’s nuclear program, respect all cultures and civilizations.”

And Javad Shamaghdari, the head of Iran’s Cinematic Agency, will release an official statement regarding the win, viewing it as monumental not because it is Iran’s first Oscar, but because of its win over the Israeli drama, “Footnote.”

“This is the beginning of the collapse of the influence of the Zionist lobby over American society … this is an unusual reaction to the Zionist lobby, but it marks the beginning of the collapse of Israeli influence.”

When I ask Faranak where Maadi is the next morning, she tells me he’s asleep, and that she’s going to disconnect the phones so that he doesn’t wake up.

“What happens next is so much bigger than him.”

This year the stakes were higher than ever. Netanyahu and the Israel lobby, of which AIPAC is the biggest and most formidable arm, were beating the drums for war with Iran. AIPAC had already successfully lobbied for a draconian and ineffective sanctions bill, opposed by Obama, which resulted in a 13 percent spike in gas prices, to their highest ever at this time of the year. The Senate passed the bill 100-0. With hypocrisy that would be breathtaking if it weren’t an everyday event, Obama’s warmongering GOP opponents seized upon the high gas prices to attack Obama.

The Republican strategy was to paint him as an insufficiently ardent supporter of Israel (notwithstanding the fact that he had quietly accepted repeated humiliations by Netanyahu, completely abandoned the Palestinian issue, and gave Israel everything it wanted every time it asked, including vetoing a U.N. resolution condemning Israeli settlements that simply repeated an official U.S. position) and a cowardly appeaser on Iran. By so doing, they hoped to peel away crucial Jewish votes in swing states like Florida, and dry up the vast campaign contributions (by some estimates as much as half) made by Jews to the Democratic Party.

Obama had to thread the needle. He, along with America’s military and intelligence agencies, knew that a war with Iran would have catastrophic consequences for the U.S. and the world. But he could not say that explicitly.

He had to engage instead in a kind of Kabuki dance, making just enough warlike gestures to placate Israel’s supporters while furtively signaling, with almost imperceptible movements, that he meant the exact opposite.

The first step was to stake out the most aggressive possible position on Iran, short of actual war. He chose the recipient of this message carefully: Jeffrey Goldberg, a hawkish mainstream journalist with credibility among Obama’s target audience, right-leaning Democratic American Jews. Making like Dirty Harry and saying, “I don’t bluff,” Obama told Goldberg that preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb was not only in Israel’s interest, but in America’s. He then laid out the usual reasons: Iran might give the bomb to terrorists, it would feel emboldened to make trouble, and its possession of the bomb would spur a destabilizing arms race.

Whether or not Obama actually believed what he told Goldberg is unclear. (In fact, the arguments he used are weak and unconvincing, as this definitive piece by Paul Pillar shows.) But that was irrelevant, because Obama had and has no intention of starting a war with Iran. All that was necessary was that he cover his flank with Israel’s amen corner.

Then Obama had to meet with Netanyahu. This could not have been pleasant. The two men do not like each other. Obama knew that the far-right Israeli leader wants to see a Republican elected president. He was forced to watch helplessly as Netanyahu went behind his back to Congress, garnering endless standing ovations in a display so egregious that it led the ultimate establishment columnist, the Times’ Thomas Friedman, to use the expression “the Israel lobby” – vindicating the courageous academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who a few years earlier were smeared as anti-Semites for using the same expression. But Obama played his role flawlessly, making all the right noises about America’s undying support for Israel – even using the folksy “we’ve got your back” – while quietly rejecting Netanyahu’s demand that America abandon diplomacy and attack Iran.

But it was in his press conference after addressing AIPAC that Obama demonstrated his mastery of political judo. By attacking those who were “beating the drums of war,” he simultaneously painted his GOP rivals as irresponsible lightweights and fired a warning shot across Netanyahu’s bow.

Even more significant was his statement, “It’s also not just an issue of consequences for Israel if action is taken prematurely. There are consequences to the United States as well.” By drawing a subtle but clear distinction between Israel and the United States, Obama threw down the gantlet to Netanyahu and to his American supporters: If Israel attacks Iran, the United States is not going to fall on its sword for you. It isn’t going to be 1973, when we came riding to your rescue, or your 2008 slaughter in Gaza, which we ignored. It’s going to be Suez in 1956. And you aren’t going to like it.

Obama felt emboldened to confront Israel and its American supporters for three reasons. First and foremost, he knew Americans do not want another ruinous Mideast war. Second, he correctly assessed that most American Jews would vote for him and continue to give him money even if he refused to be Netanyahu’s hand puppet. And third, by turning the war into a partisan issue, Netanyahu and the Israel lobby left Obama no choice but to punch back. And once he did, he fundamentally shifted the terms of the debate.

It’s hard to say whether Netanyahu, the GOP or the Israel lobby is the biggest loser here. Netanyahu might be. As Aluf Benn, editor of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz noted, by invoking Auschwitz, Netanyahu moved closer than ever before to committing himself to attacking Iran. But because Obama outmuscled him, Netanyahu now faces an excruciating choice: do nothing and stand revealed as a Neville Chamberlain, or attack Iran and risk destroying the “special relationship” with America that is Israel’s strategic cornerstone. The true significance of Obama’s subtle marginalizing of the Israel lobby is that it puts enormous pressure on Netanyahu not to attack.

The GOP is not feeling too chipper today either. Normally, the War Party could count on there being no downside to urging war, especially if it involved “defending” Israel. But Iraq and Afghanistan have changed that. The American people have no stomach to fight yet another war in the Middle East. And they definitely have no stomach to fight a war for Israel.

Which takes us to the lobby. By demanding a war with Iran that Israel wants, and that President Obama and the American people do not, it committed the two unforgivable sins: It made it clear that Israel and America’s interests do not always coincide, and it took Israel’s side over America’s. That was bad enough, and the embrace of the GOP’s dreadful candidates was the final straw. AIPAC and the rest of the Israel lobby are now locked in a steamy ménage a trois with Netanyahu and the GOP. For Democrats, proponents of peace, and those who desire justice in the Middle East, it’s a match made in heaven.