Steve Benen: At the most recent debate for the Republican presidential candidates, Mitt Romney wanted to show off his understanding of international affairs, and told the audience that Syria is Iran’s “key ally” and Iranians’ “route to the sea.”
Iran, of course, has 1,520 miles of its own coastline – and doesn’t share a border with Syria….
Today he has an op-ed in the Washington Post, calling for …. shaping a U.S. policy towards Iran that’s “the same as Ronald Reagan’s.”
Um, Mitt? The Reagan administration sold Iran weapons, in violation of an arms embargo, in order to help illegally finance the Contras in Nicaragua…..
Members of the American Israel Policy Affairs Committee listen to Mitt Romney address the annual policy conference via satellite link at the Washington Convention Center March 6
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Newt Gingrich Falls Asleep on Screen, Asks for Panel’s Questions, But No Panel Exists:
Jeffrey Goldberg (The Atlantic): President Obama gave a very good speech to AIPAC: Tough on Hamas, tough on Iran, but also somewhat tough on Israeli procrastination.
He understands Israel’s dilemma in the same way Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin understood their country’s dilemma. Israel needs to find a way to maintain its democratic nature and its Jewish majority.
Only compromise on the West Bank — yes, a return to 1967 borders, with some obvious adjustments (and the President was much more clear today than he was on Thursday on what the term “land-swap” means) will help Israel maintain itself as a Jewish democracy, and will protect it from becoming an international pariah.
And by the way, Israel’s biggest and most effective defender on the international stage in the coming months will be… Barack Obama. He made that crystal-clear. He opposes the unilateral bid for Palestinian independence in a very forthright way. Now it is up to Prime Minister Netanyahu to listen to Israel’s friend in the White House.
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‘A Proud Day For Obama’
Josh Marshall (TPM): Sticks to commitment to policies that will secure Israel’s future, even at the expense of opportunistic attacks and political controversy.
Obliquely and with respect to his audience, in his speech to AIPAC today, President Obama also responded to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s repeated lies about what President Obama said only the day before.
Just as no man is an island, no country can be either. On its present course Israel is on its way to becoming a pariah state, a status in which it cannot indefinitely or even perhaps long survive…..
….Netanyahu believes that US power is forever and that the US political consensus to support Israel in almost any policy choice it makes will never change. So he can simply ignore the currents of history and international affairs and thumb his nose at every other country in the world. But neither is true.
…The occupation itself represents the true existential threat to Israel. Most who don’t have a profound and over-riding ideological commitment to maintaining a state in all of historic Palestine get this. That’s why even someone like Tzipi Livni, a former member of the Likud and someone from a Revisionist family, realized that partition is the only viable path forward.
For me this is the key issue. Justice, peace … you don’t even need to get to those agenda items. The simple reality is that Israel needs partition for its survival, more really than any of the other parties to the controversy.
The Obama Diary 
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