A Washington Post report on January 13 says President Obama reminded us in his State of the Union address that he considers his Iran deal a great achievement. In the real world, Iran has sent troops into Syria, held American citizens for years in jails, conducted two ballistic missile tests in contravention of United Nations resolutions, threatened to speed up its missile program, and increased oppression of its own people. Then, just before Obama was due to deliver his State of the Union, Iran seized two Navy vessels with 10 sailors, telling us they would be detained overnight. (They were released next morning.) A president in touch with reality would be humiliated, angry and eager to impose penalties on the mullahs. That would not be this president.
In the run-up to his address, a White House spokeswoman said the president would not address the naval incident in his State of the Union. After all, our Iran policy is a great success! And, the White House hastened to add, the seizing of U.S. personnel was “not hostile.” Yes, that was the spin of the evening. Now this is the Iranians’ conduct before sanctions are lifted. One can only imagine what they will do with $100 billion in their pockets.
Republicans were flabbergasted. Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), in a pre-SOTU interview, observed:
This kind of openly hostile action is not surprising, it’s exactly what I and so many others predicted when President Obama was negotiating the nuclear deal with Iran, that it would embolden their aggression towards the United States and our allies in the region.
A senior administration official said there’s no sign of hostile intent by Iran. Think about that for a second. Senior members of Barack Obama’s administration are apologizing for Iran seizing two U.S. Navy vessels and holding ten sailors hostage. The White House, tonight, is a hotbed of cold feet.
Likewise, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) told an interviewer, “Iran is testing the boundaries of this administration’s resolve and they know that the boundaries are pretty wide that the administration is willing to let them get away with many things,” Rubio said. “You’re only seeing this accelerate since the deal was signed with Iran.”
The president obviously thinks all is well. Given the president’s cluelessness, it is not surprising that the House voted 418 to 2 to impose new financial sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear test.  The Senate will soon take up action. “The past several decades of U.S. policy toward North Korea has been an abject failure, and the United States — together with our allies and others in the region — must take a more proactive approach in addressing North Korea’s provocation,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told me late Tuesday. “I am continuing to work with other members of the committee on legislation that the committee will consider later this month.”
With the president off in his own world, the House is set to vote Wednesday to impose sanctions on entities related to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. It will likely pass its Iran bill, but on a party-line vote. The legislation is sound, mind you. Sanctions guru Mark Dubowitz from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tells Right Turn, “The Iran bill provides a common-sense approach to ensuring that Iranian entities designated for non-nuclear reasons are not the beneficiaries of sanctions relief.” But what’s the problem with Democrats — are not many of them “profoundly concerned,” as Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said recently? Well, this is their chance to show some spine.
This is a fix of their own making. Their rhetoric is at odds with their votes and with the disastrous Iran policy they supported. Republicans are not about to let them hide.
In remarks to the media, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised, “I met today with Chairman Corker and Senator Cory Alexander (sic) — Cory Gardner and Senator Gardner’s been working on a North Korea sanctions bill. We anticipate it will come out of the Foreign Relations Committee very soon, and I intend to schedule floor time on it shortly.” On Iran, about which he once said he would not move anything without a filibuster-proof majority, he opened the door. “Well, we’re certainly going to be looking at Iran. And Chairman Corker and his team over at Foreign Relations are probably going to be giving us further advice about how to deal with the obvious rogue regime with which we have this outrageous deal that they don’t intend to comply with,” he said. “And — so I think Iran is going to be an ongoing issue. Look — look at what’s happened in the wake of the Iran deal, a total and obvious and open split between the Sunni world and the Shia world. I go back to what Jimmy Carter said at the beginning of the summer when I asked about the president’s foreign policy. He said he couldn’t think of a single place in the world where we were in better shape now than we were when President Obama came to office.”
The president’s refusal to recognize this is deeply troubling, and Democrats at the very least will need to vote this year on a measure to reauthorize existing sanctions, which would “snap back” if Iran is cited for violating the deal. Perhaps the rendezvous with reality will encourage Democrats to take up new sanctions for Iran’s missile test, human rights atrocities and seizure of Americans. It seems they will need to do it over the president’s objections.
 

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.