Despite the disturbing images of Iran’s regime beating and killing people who protested the country’s recent rigged election that have been filling television screen and web browser windows for weeks, and despite the nearly unanimous condemnation of this action from around the world, the Obama administration is reported to be ready to fight against greater economic sanctions on Iran during the upcoming G8 summit.

Looks like Obama has decided to “meddle,” but he’s meddling with the resolve of our allies rather than meddling to oppose Iran’s brutal regime.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hinted in a newspaper interview earlier in the week that the G8 is due to decide on new financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Berlusconi disclosed that he had spoken with the heads of the G8 nations and has discussed such steps with them.

According to the Italian prime minister, “the general leaning [among G8 leaders] is toward sanctions.”

However, diplomatic sources in New York reported that American officials are working behind the scenes to prevent new sanctions from being imposed against Iran.

The policy is apparently designed to keep the naive pipe dream of negotiations with Iran alive.

The Obama administration, according to the diplomatic sources, has discarded the notion of direct talks with Iran. However, the United States is still interested in re-engaging Iran through the renewed discussion of its nuclear program through the six permanent United Nations Security Council members.

This is analogous to the administration’s, and more generally liberals’, theories on gun control.  It’s the guns that are the problem, not the subset of gun wielders who use them for crime.

In the case of Iran, they see the existence of the nuclear program as the problem and not the people with their finger on the trigger of that program.

A strong diplomatic stand against the mullahs in charge of Iran and tough sanctions stand a good chance of removing those thugs from power, erasing the chance that these America haters will posess the weapons that seem inevitiable at this point. But the Obama administration isn’t interested in that outcome.  They’re interested in convincing the regime not to weaponize their nuclear program.