Well, Tobin essentially gets it right: Obama is upset about attempts by congress to toughen the sanctions threats against Iran because these threats treat the current 'negotiations' as real, as in intent on stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions - but they are not, they're an illusion, a smokescreen designed to cover the fact that Obama has no intentions of stopping Iran, decided a long time ago on some vague, irresolute notion of 'containment' and has been lying ever since. So 'hawks' in congress treating the negotiations as real puts Obama in a problematic position: at the end of the six months, when Iran has sufficiently demonstrated it has no intention of abandoning its ambitions, Obama will be expected to get tough in accordance with congress' demands, which is not something that fits at all well with the smokescreen plan; or, what else could happen here is Iran decides to make Obama's life really miserable by treating the sanctions actions by congress as a breach of trust and runs off in a pout, with China and Russia of course defending their pique all the way - which again puts Obama in a very tricky position of having to act as if he seriously intends to stop Iran from getting the bomb. Tobin is right: Obama is acting as if he is the player with the weaker hand - and that's because he is - you can't win at poker if the other people at the table know you're bluffing - everybody at this table knows Obama is and always has been bluffing. Actually, more accurate - you can't win at poker if your intention was never to win but only to bluff long enough so as to maybe with some credibility blame your loss on the other guy cheating. Yeah, that nails Obama's Iran policy, I think.
