What to make of President Obama's interpretation of the Iranian leadership? Challenged by The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg to account for the seeming inconsistency of relying on the rationality of a regime that holds a profoundly anti-Semitic worldview, the president denied that the "venomous anti-Semitism" (his words) of the mullahs is a barrier to rational decision making: "Well, the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn't preclude you from being interested in survival.