AIPAC wants massive crippling sanctions against Israel's prime enemy in the Middle East. Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the US, keeps making that case. The Obama administration, on the other hand, wants sanctions targeted more narrowly at the regime rather than the people:
U.S. Treasury Department strategists already have been focusing on Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has emerged as the economic and military power behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In recent weeks, senior Green Movement figures -- who have been speaking at major Washington think tanks -- have made up a list of IRGC-related companies they suggest targeting, which has been forwarded to the Obama administration by third parties....
Clinton has been working indirectly with the Green Movement to fashion sanctions that will support them (their leaders oppose the kind of sanctions AIPAC wants). Lieberman and McCain have stated that they, rather than the president, determine American foreign policy toward Israel and Iran. They've stated that in Israel in a blatant attempt to undermine a sitting president's leverage with an ally he wants to nudge away from the brink of self-destruction.
We'll see in the near future if they are right. I mean: McCain won the last election, right? Or does it really matter who wins elections as far as Middle East policy is concerned?