Back in January 2002, when President George W. Bush labeled Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil,” the response from the doyens and self-declared guardians of American foreign policy was immediate. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the phrase “a big mistake,” as did diplomats like James Dobbins who, despite Iran’s covert nuclear program and provision of 50 tons of weaponry to Palestinian terrorists, argued that Iran could be trusted. PBS Frontline called the “Axis of Evil” speech a “slap in the face” to Iran. To Obama and his aides, Iran’s inclusion in “The Axis of Evil” was original sin, never mind that Americans seemed to object to the phrase more than Iranian, for whom “Death to America” chants were the staple of Friday morning prayers.

Indeed, the Iranians have become masters of feigning grievance to play naïve diplomats and put adversaries on the defensive. No American diplomat likes being called culturally insensitive, let alone racist. Shortly after Obama took office, for example, former diplomats William Luers, Thomas Pickering, and Jim Walsh, who together have for years pushed Iran diplomacy and engaged in behind-the-scenes Track II talks with Iranian leaders, penned an essay in 2009 entitled “How to Deal with Iran,” in which they warned that Iranians “bristle at the use of the phrase ‘carrots and sticks,’” because it depicted them as donkeys and because it implied a threat to beat Iran into submission if they could not be bought. The Iranian grievance was completely manufactured, and Luers’, Pickering’s and Walsh’s Iranian interlocutors played them like a fiddle. After all, Iranians themselves had long used the phrase carrots and sticks.

While diplomats condemn bullhorn diplomacy when conducted by Americans, they do not hesitate to excuse far more crude Iranian examples. State Department spokesman Marie Harf, for example, suggested that those “Death to America” chants might not be a major thing, but those prone to blaming America first might want to consider the latest from Maj.-Gen. Yahya Safavi, who led the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) between 1997 and 2007 and has since been an advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. According to Sepah News, an IRGC news portal, Safavi gave a speech in which he drew the red lines about what would precipitate Iranian military involvement in Syria and Iraq that went beyond proxies and advisors and instead relied on much more overt intervention. (Short answer: an Islamic State attack on the holy Shi’ite shrines). What is curious, however, was his characterization of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen as an “Axis of Resistance,” and the United States, Europe, “Zionist Regime,” and moderate Arab states as a “Satanic Triangle.” So, at a crucial point in negotiations, indeed, one day before the initial final deadline, Khamenei’s aide called the United States one point in a Satanic Triangle. No Iranian official, not President Hassan Rouhani, not Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, not any of the Iranian commentariat, condemned Safavi for his turn-of-phrase. Nor did those who publicly criticized Bush bother to raise their concerns. Madeleine Albright? Silent. Pickering? Silent. Dobbins? If it doesn’t involve bashing Bush, then silent.

Frankly, it’s not a bad thing for diplomats to have a thick skin. After all, in the scheme of things, the Iranian-sponsored murder of hundreds of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan should trump concern over being called Satanic by a man responsible for some of the murders. And certainly Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism and its holding of American hostages should be of far greater priority to the likes of Albright and others concerned with American security than whether or not Bush used the phrase ‘Axis of Evil.’ But, alas, hypocrisy runs supreme. And while Iranian officials would end their careers in Evin Prison if they second-guessed the Supreme Leader or undercut what he saw as Iran’s interests, American commentators and journalists continue to both show a lack of perspective mixed with a huge degree of hypocrisy. If the ‘Axis of Evil’ was such a threat to diplomacy, it’s time to call out each and every instance of Iranian bluster, incitement, and hyperbole. At least then, the American public would understand the reality of what the Iranian regime is rather than the scrubbed, sanitized version that the often fawning Western press would like to depict.