President Obama had a somewhat contradictory message for the AIPAC conference on Sunday, an outgrowth of his typical play for a middle course in any and all things. On the one hand, he decried “loose talk of war”. On the other hand, he exhibited… loose talk of war, while pushing for sanctions that in the past have had serious consequences for the innocent.

The prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran has become more realistic in recent weeks. Israeli officials told the AP that they would not even inform the United States in the event of a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And there’s a sense that the window for an attack that would actually damage the nuclear program is short, perhaps just through this spring.

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Washington next week for talks with the White House.

If we see military action in Iran in the next several months, you can trace part of the reason back to a redistricting quirk in the San Fernando Valley and a debate between Democratic House Representatives Howard Berman and Brad Sherman, redrawn into the same district. They spend most of the night trying to be the most belligerent to Iran and most solicitous to whatever Israel wants.

A Palestinian who was detained without charge under an Israeli administrative detention order has ended a hunger strike he has been engaged in for sixty-six days. Khader Adnan reached a deal with Israeli authorities for his release.

Under the proposed deal, Adnan will be released on April 17, three weeks before his administrative order expires.

The US and its allies have been attacking one evil empire after another for decades, including the evil empire of Mohammed Mosaddegh, the scary Red Menace in Iran, in 1953. We have nothing to show for any of them. Why do US, European and Israeli leaders think this time things will be different?

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, said today that Israel was “very far off” from any attack on Iran. More important, Israeli intelligence indicates that they have not yet determined that Iran has decided even to build a nuclear weapon. These are things you don’t hear much in the US press, so let’s run the [...]

Prior to all the rising tensions around Iran, the US and Israel had scheduled a large set of joint military exercises in the spring. Maybe this wasn’t necessarily a provocative act, but with everything happening around Iran, it gained a new resonance. So today, when the two sides postponed the exercises, some saw it as a way to cool those tensions.

A provocative article in Foreign Policy magazine suggests that Israeli Mossad officers recruited members of the Pakistani terrorist organization Jundallah to aid in the covert operations against Iranian targets, including bombings in the Baluchistan region and potentially the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. The Mossad officers, according to Mark Perry, posed as American intelligence agents during the recruitment, using US passports.

When we last saw neo-con nutball and Jenifer Rubin’s BFF Rachel Abrams, she was still publicly working out some of the kinks for her proposed Israeli/Palestinian two-state solution where the Israelis got to keep all of the land and the Palestinians would move to Waterworld where they would be welcomed as shark chum(s).

Remember when Red diaper baby Ezra Klein set up a Lie-beral Super Secret Decoder Ring Society where he and his elitist komrades plotted treason and conspired to elect the Kenyan Muslim Communist so they could shove Socialism down America’s slender swan-like virginal throat? And then bow-tied anus Tucker Carlson asked to join and Ezra and his buddies were all like, “sure” and they extended their hand to shake on it only to pull it back at the last second – psych! – and then they stuffed Tucker into a locker and went off to drink vodka and set fire to Christmas trees?