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As expected, Mitt Romney in Israel tried his hardest to make casino mogul and Likud Party stalwart Sheldon Adelson happy. Adelson has pledged $100 million to Romney’s presidential campaign.

Romney put all options on the table (a euphemism for illegally launching a war) with regard to Iran. But in an interview with Jim Muir of CBS, Romney walked back the leak by one of his aides that he would support an Israeli attack on Iran. He just meant, he said, he would be generally supportive of Israel, which should have “all the options on the table.” In other words, he, as usual, wants to have it both ways– seem to support Israeli hawks spoiling for a war, but try to reassure his nervous American audience that he isn’t campaigning on definitely going to war. (No Israeli attack on Iran could avoid embroiling the United States in conflict with that country or avoid endangering US troops and diplomatic personnel in Iraq and the Gulf). When Muir challenged him that in that case, his suggested policies toward Iran sound the same as those of Barack Obama, Romney said that the current crushing sanctions should have been imposed earlier. So it is a matter of timetable, then?

But one of the bases for US sanctions on Iran, and for the ability of Washington to get other countries to go along with them, is United Nations Security Council resolutions on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

Romney wants to appeal to the UNSC resolutions with regard to Iran. But in other areas, he wants to disregard them.

Romney told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Israel, like other countries, “has the capacity” to choose its capital, and that he would, in consultation with Israeli authorities, move the US embassy there if he became president. He didn’t use the word “right to choose its capital,” because, presumably, he knows that the status of Jerusalem is a matter for diplomatic final status negotiations with the Palestinians. That is the reason that the countries of the world keep their embassies in Tel Aviv. Putting an embassy in Jerusalem forecloses the issue of the negotiations. The right wing Israeli position is that they own all of Jerusalem, since they conquered it in 1967. The rest of the world doesn’t agree that after WW II and the UN Charter, it is permitted to go around annexing other people’s territory by war.

Romney’s position will put him at odds with NATO allies, including most of Europe and Turkey. It will cause immense frictions with Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, and with the Arab world generally. It could also provoke violence. Al-Qaeda gave as one reason for launching the 2001 attacks on the US, American support for the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem.

Not that Romney cares about US allies in the Middle East other than Israel— most of whom he has now insulted and alienated. The Middle East is undergoing tremendous change and the Arab people are mobilizing. Country-club Mitt is the worst possible person to deal with this transformation, and he proved it in Israel.

And, it is hard to see why the world should line up to sanction Iran as Romney insists, based on the UNSC resolutions, if Romney wants to completely disregard the UN Security Council’s repeated castigation of the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem.

Below is a golden oldie Informed Comment that explains the legalities of the Jerusalem issue with reference to members of the US congress who align with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party on this issue. On most of these observations, you could now insert “Romney” for “Eric Cantor” or “Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.” The Mormon rich guy has joined Revisionist Zionism.