And now for something completely different.
Picture an old Shakespearean theater (or, as the snobs would say, thee-aa-taaa-hh), right when the fidgety crowd grows silent because the holy curtain, resplendent with images of the miraculous Obama, slowly rises.
Barack Obama, former president of these here United States, appears on the stage of world events wearing the invisible crown of moral superiority.
Entering stage right is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who carries ill tidings about Iran, nuclear danger, and the small matter of a regime that’s spent decades threatening Israel and chanting “DEATH TO AMERICA!”
Obama looks up, with a face appearing to be pulled out at the chin, leaving a pair of substantial ears to anchor him in place. He raises one hand, pausing for applause only he can hear (it’s the ears, you know), and announces that he alone resisted the madness.
“Drag me into war? Never,” he seems to say from his very tall stool of virtue.
Out of nowhere, a fake medieval trumpet wheezes, dust blowing out the bell, a giant foot drops from the sky, covering the stage, and the sketch abruptly ends.
Okay, it’s not the best Monty Python parody to use for satire, but hopefully some symbolism pulled through.
In a recently published interview, Obama claimed that Netanyahu used the same arguments with him that the Israeli leader later used with President Donald Trump. Obama cast himself as the steady man who refused military action and, instead, opted for diplomacy. He also said he still believes his approach was right.
In Barack Obama’s final days in office, he found himself in the painful position of trying to console his staff, the Democratic Party, and millions of supporters. He attempted to convince them—even if he could not entirely convince himself—that the looming Presidency of Donald Trump was not a national calamity. In the past, he would say, the country had endured slavery, the Civil War, the Great Depression, Jim Crow, assassinations. And, though Trump was alarming in many ways, America was blessed by the strength of its institutions and the resilience of its people. The word “guardrails” was uttered constantly. In Obama’s estimation, Trump would not erase all his achievements. As he put it, “Maybe fifteen per cent of that gets rolled back.”
This kind of calm was pure Obama. His appeal had as much to do with character and temperament as it did with his center-left ideology. Although Obama believed that Trump’s ugliest slurs against him, particularly his deployment of the birther theory, were a racist outrage that heightened the threats against him and his family, he now took pains to set aside his contempt. Insuring that there was another orderly transition of power—that, too, was part of his rhetoric of consolation.
Such poise was not easy to sustain. When Obama met Trump for a ritual pre-Inauguration visit to the Oval Office, he was struck by how unschooled and incurious the President-elect was. Trump, Obama told people, seemed indifferent to hearing about potential national-security perils—North Korea, Russia—preferring to brag about the size of the crowds at his campaign rallies. Obama pitched Trump on preserving several of his signature achievements, including the Affordable Care Act and the Iran nuclear deal. Trump responded that he would consider the request, and Obama thought it was not impossible that he meant it.
Naturally, the tale arrives with Obama placed at the center of wisdom, restraint, and good lighting—lighting tips learned at the knees of Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
The timing isn’t subtle: Trump authorized Operation Epic Fury against Iran after months of pressure, intelligence sharing, and escalating danger involving Israel and Iran.
Obama’s story lets him suggest that Netanyahu used the same pitch for years and that Trump finally went where Obama refused to go.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Obama said Netanyahu had tried to convince him to pursue war with Iran, adding that the Israeli leader “got what he wanted” in more recent developments. However, Obama questioned whether such an outcome ultimately benefits either Israel or the United States.
Beyond the immediate issue of Iran, Obama warned that current geopolitical shifts could have long-term consequences for global stability. He pointed to strains in traditional alliances and cautioned that the international system built after World War II, anchored by institutions like NATO, is under pressure.
Obama also discussed the broader challenges facing US global leadership, arguing that rebuilding trust with allies may be more difficult than addressing domestic issues.
If you think about it, it’s really a neat little performance: Netanyahu becomes the pushy salesman, Trump becomes the buyer, and Obama becomes the only adult in the room who read the fine print.
Netanyahu has long warned that Iran’s nuclear program poses an existential danger to Israel. Obama knows that history, and he also knows many Americans remember his Iran posture as weak, naive, and too eager to treat Tehran like a difficult negotiating partner instead of a hostile regime with innocent blood on its hands.
Instead of pursuing joint strikes with Israel, Obama said he prioritized diplomacy with Iran.
Those efforts led to the 2015 nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which imposed limits on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
Netanyahu strongly opposed the agreement, warning it would fail to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and would strengthen the country economically and militarily.
Trump later withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018, reimposing sanctions on Iran and aligning more closely with Netanyahu’s position.
Barry’s new version tries sanding down all of that to leave one shiny statue standing: Obama, the restrained, austere scholar, nobly blinking while everybody else reaches for a sword.
The real purpose looks obvious: Obama wants to reopen an old argument and drive a wedge between Trump supporters who disagree over foreign policy. Barry is implying that Trump got handled by Netanyahu while Obama stayed too wise to be moved. It’s less foreign policy analysis than reputation repair with better upholstery.
There’s something missing that I just can’t place my finger on. Please help me remember something about a plane, pallets, tons of cash … ah! Yes, even after paying a several billion dollar bribe to the mullahs, Obama removes the part where Iran didn’t become less dangerous because of his preference for green diplomacy.
Tehran, with help from brand-new U.S. dollars, kept funding terror, threatening Israel, and expanding its reach while Western leaders congratulated themselves for managing the problem.
Obama’s defenders call his approach patient, while plenty of Americans would call it wishful thinking — at best — in a tailored suit.
Let’s return to our stage.
Obama takes his final bow, still certain of his intestinal fortitude to resist the warmongering fever. Netanyahu remains Israel’s prime minister, dealing with Iran as a legitimate threat, not a TED Talk topic. President Trump remains president of the United States, making decisions in a world Obama (and, with Susan Rice’s work, Biden) helped create.
The curtain falls.
The giant foot lands again, but in a way that a set of ears sits on either side of the heel, looking like a giant Temu version of Mercury’s foot, about to send a message from the Roman gods.
The audience is asked to admire the former president’s restraint, but the joke lingers because Obama is speaking without a script, so the man keeps talking and talking and talking. Barry never sees what happened; he didn’t stop the danger out of Iran.
He just wrote himself inside a narrative where he never belonged, where he never succeeded, and into a reset of a history that never happened.
In short, Obama has long since become a president losing hold of his carefully crafted narrative, one polished for years until reality started showing through the shine.
Obama’s latest Iran story isn’t just memory-lane theater. It’s another attempt to polish his record, needle Trump supporters, and pretend restraint always equals wisdom. Join PJ Media VIP today and use promo code FIGHT for 60% off so we can keep pulling apart the performances, the spin, and the carefully staged nonsense.
