Mideast: When it comes to Israel's coming nuclear conflict with Iran, President Obama has told our ally, "I have your back." But given the president's sorry track record, Israel is right to be skeptical.

The president certainly sounded tough when he spoke to AIPAC Sunday. "We will do what it takes," he told the pro-Israel group, "to preserve Israel's qualitative military edge — because Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat."

Nothing, he said, is "off the table" when it comes to responding to Iran's nuclear threat. Nothing. Obama was just as tough when he spoke Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reportedly repeating that "the U.S. has Israel's back."

Tough talk is nice. We only wish we could be sure it was something other than an election-year sop to Obama's faltering Jewish support.

Netanyahu desperately needs a friend in his struggle against Iran and most of the Arab world. No doubt he wants to believe Obama. He even thanked the president for supporting Israel's right to defend itself.

But as tempting as it is, Netanyahu shouldn't trust Obama's rhetoric. Just look at his track record. Under Obama, the U.S. has spent three years trying to get Syria and Iran to alter their behavior toward Israel and the West, to no avail. Syria is slaughtering its own citizens, while Iran is building a bomb.

Obama says he wants to give diplomacy a chance. Fine. But we've given diplomacy a chance with both the Palestinians and the Iranians for more than 30 years, with no results to show for it other than the growing hatred both have for the U.S. and Israel.

Obama supported "Arab Spring" revolts in both Libya and Egypt that now look like they'll lead to radical Islamist rule in both nations. A huge mistake.

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Obama might have shown how tough diplomacy works during 2009's "Green Revolution" in Iran, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the Iranian mullahs' repression. He kept quiet.

Or he might have convinced Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas to recognize a Jewish state of Israel's right to exist — the real key to peace. He didn't.

In 2010, when Turkey, a NATO ally, allowed a hostile flotilla to launch against Israel from its own soil, he might have forcefully intervened. Again, he didn't.

As for Iran, Obama's tough talk doesn't include a red line — one that says: Cross this and we'll hit you hard. This will only embolden Iran's leaders to pursue a nuclear weapon. They don't fear talk; they fear action. And the massive cuts that Obama has planned for U.S. conventional and nuclear forces hardly qualify as action.

Even as Obama called for more diplomacy, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned Monday of "serious concerns" over Tehran's atomic program. The IAEA charged Iran with stonewalling efforts to inspect its nuclear sites, and said Iran has tripled its output of enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon.

"If Barack Obama gets re-elected," GOP hopeful Mitt Romney said Monday, "Iran will have a nuclear weapon, and the world will change if that's the case."

Sadly, it's beginning to look like Romney's right.