That seems to be the "new politics" dynamic in international relations under the Obama administration.

I heard an interesting, if ultimately faulty, theory on why the Obama administration is right to ditch relations with Israel and was right to scrap missile defense in eastern Europe.

The theory states that by abandoning Israel, Obama has cleared himself with the appeasement wing of the Left by forcing Israel to do the dirty work of disrupting their ambitions for regional hegemony. If Iran does indeed attack Israel, Obama would have already washed his hands of being considered the "aggressor" if he then commits operations to assist Israel with repelling any Iranian action. Basically, he's made the U.S. a peace keeper in any such conflict rather than a perceived instigator.

The argument continues that by scrapping land-based missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia will be more inclined to join a Western NATO alliance with combating Iranian nuclear ballistic missile ambitions. 

With the test launch of Iran's Shahab-3 ICBM which has a range of over 1,200 miles, we may have very well missed the boat on preemptively stopping any Iranian aggression.

This is the problem with appeasement in general and the theory outlined above in particular.

Dictatorial regimes such as Iran could care less about "dialogue" and "sanctions". Obama has been consistently the most pro-appeasement President we've had since Jimmy Carter, and Iran thanked us then with a year-long hostage crisis.

Today, Iran has both the missile capability to hit targets in Israel and Europe as well as fully functioning secret nuclear sites. They brutally shut down a citizen's revolt over the summer that, with U.S. support, may very well have sounded a death knell for the Mullah's reign. Obama's priorities shown through in that struggle as he stepped back and watch the carnage unfold without a strong condemnation of the crackdown on dissent.

Of late, Obama has shown a willingness to isolate Iran in various ways including enforcing trade sanctions instituted by the Bush administration. 

However, as WaPo notes:

Even so, the effort is not likely to produce instantaneous results.  "The idea of targeting insurance and reinsurance is a good one," said David F. Gordon, a former State Department official who is director of research at Eurasia Group, a political risk and consulting firm. "It is the only potential game-changer around. But I am not sure it will be enough to move the Iranians and do it in a timely fashion. The Iranians are very committed to the program."

Of course it won't be enough. Nothing will. Well, nothing short of the unthinkable. I can only hope that Obama recognizes that the first line of defense against an Iranian bomb is Israel and reverses his disturbing abandonment of traditional U.S.-Israeli relations in time to effectively prevent Iran from accomplishing its stated goals in the region.

Russ