Change Israel can believe in.
Obama seeking crippling sanctions against Iran.
"Even Israel, which has long warned that a military strike might be the only effective response to Iran’s ambitions, now seems satisfied to let President Obama play out his strategy of offering to talk while threatening to impose painful measures if those talks go nowhere.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel telephoned the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and five other influential lawmakers on Thursday and Friday to urge the United States to pursue “crippling sanctions” against Iran, according to Israeli officials and people close to the lawmakers.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” that the administration was exploring how to “broaden and deepen sanctions.”"-NYT.

Obama came into government with a pledge to engage Iran "without preconditions". All that is out the window now, now the goal is to make even the the most hardline Israeli government in decades "happy". Israel has always threatened to attack Iran, but there's no such thing as a unilateral Israeli attack. For Israeli to succeed in such an endevour would require significant American assistance. In this case sanctions are not an alternative to an Israeli attack, the US and Israel are shoulder-to-shoulder in this, all the way. So much for Change.

UPDATE: In an earlier post i asked..."Russia, opportunistic as ever, caves in to pressure. But why hasn't Putin said anything yet?"
Now comes this "analysis" from the NYT,: "Already, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, appears to be positioning Russia to back away from the supportive stance suggested by Mr. Medvedev’s comments.

Asked about the announcement on Friday by the United States, Britain and France that Iran had failed to disclose a secret uranium enrichment plant, Mr. Lavrov said it was not evident that Iran had done anything wrong. He said it was premature to assert that new sanctions were necessary.

“As I understand it, there is no clarity regarding the legal issues,” Mr. Lavrov said.

He also chided the Western powers for not telling Russia earlier that their intelligence agencies had discovered the Iranian enrichment plant.

Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s paramount leader, who tends to be more hawkish than Mr. Medvedev toward the United States, in recent days has not echoed Mr. Medvedev’s views on sanctions"-NYT