Towards a Chelmesque Foreign Policy

Since President Obama's foreign policy is clearly inspired by the spirit of Chelm, we here feel a certain responsibility for it. Following are some specific suggestions for the "targeted" yet "crippling" sanctions the administration keeps saying it will impose on the Iranian "elites" to stop them from developing an atomic bomb, although it hasn't gotten around to doing so yet because there are much more urgent Middle Eastern matters, such as the very encouraging Israeli-Palestinian negotiations involving Arabs who refuse to sit in the same room as Jews (a Chelmesque order of priorities if there ever was one):

• Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will be required to show two forms of identification, including at least one picture ID, before they will be allowed to crash parties at the White House.
  
  
• The wives of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khameini will not be eligible to receive burqas with the Great Seal of the United States on them.
  
  
• The next time Obama wishes the Iranian people a happy Nowruz (Persian New Year), he will add, "except for scientists working in nuclear plants in violation of UN Security Council resolutions."
  
  
• If Robert Ford, the designated U.S. Ambassador to Syria, is in Damascus at the same time as Ahmadinejad, he will blow a raspberry at the Iranian motorcade (but will then hasten to assure Syrian President-for-Life Bashar "Chinless Wonder" Assad that no disrespect for him was intended).
  
  
• Instead of sending Bill Clinton to grovel for the release of the American hikers imprisoned on spying charges in Iran, Obama will send Jesse Jackson.

We welcome your suggestions and promise to forward them on to the White House.