Obama: Outclassed by Sarko

It wasn’t the first time Sarko has derided Obama; during the campaign Sarko even called Obama an empty suit.

At that time, Sarko pronounced Obama’s policy towards Iran as ‘utterly immature’, but back then Obama was only a presidential candidate. Now Obama is POTUS, and Sarko’s making himself clear:
Sarkozy Mocks Obama at UN Security Council: Hello, Big Media?

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”

Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

The rest of Sarkozy’s remarks were, well, remarkable:

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.

“Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.

“I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map,” he continued, referring to Israel.

The sharp-tongued French leader even implied that Mr Obama’s resolution 1887 had used up valuable diplomatic energy.

“If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons,” he said.

One can only agree with Sarko. Obama’s message is that Iran is “on notice,” as if it were a truant child or a delinquent debtor. Scott Ott managed to inject some humor from this in his post, Iran Claims U.S. Operates Underground Scolding Facility

Next? An October 1st meeting, but no desire to win:

“This isn’t a football game,” Obama said. “So I’m not interested in victory, I’m interested in solving the problem.”

Well, big whoop-dee-doo. Surely that statement must have the mullahs quaking in their boots.

As Anne Bayefsky puts it,

when President Obama addressed the General Assembly and Security Council he already knew that Iran was ignoring international standards, and its latest violations endangered international peace and security more than ever before. And yet he deliberately refused to put Iran on the agenda of the Council summit — the same Council that he claimed bore responsibility for responding to such threats.

President Obama knew that if the magnitude of the Iranian threat were revealed yesterday, the emptiness of his resolution would have been embarrassingly obvious and his cover blown. In public, at the highest levels of the U.N, he heralded generalities as significant. In private, he was petitioning lower levels of the U.N. to act on startling specifics of the Iranian threat.

Why did the president not present this same evidence to the Security Council, the body with “the authority and the responsibility to respond”? Why did he not challenge world leaders to deal with the same Iranian threat that he privately was pressing upon U.N. bureaucrats?

There is only one possible answer: President Obama does not have the political will to do what it takes to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Sarko understands this.

And so do the Iranians.

Related:
Iran Aiding Venezuela In Uranium Studies – Official (h/t Monica)

UPDATE
Nuclear Kumbaya

To top that off, Brazil’s vice president and former defense minister, Jose Alencar, told journalists that “we have to advance on” developing nukes “as an instrument of deterrence” because of Brazil’s massive western border and oil-rich territorial sea.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last week warned: “Venezuela’s pursuit of nuclear power is moving forward in ways that are increasingly worrisome and possibly illegal.” Leftist President Hugo Chavez may get Iranian nuclear technology in exchange for 20,000 barrels of gasoline, defying U.S. sanctions on Iran. And Russia talks of helping Chavez build a nuclear reactor.