Summary: 

Political cartoon that criticizes our the western world's focus on Middle Eastern countries' weapons of mass destruction and overlooking Israel's.

Context:

Causal: The author created this after Vanunu (former Israeli nuclear technician) revealed secrets about Israel's plans to build nuclear arsenry. The U.S and other western powers neglected to act on his claims and continued to focus on Iran.

Purpose:

satire of American foreign policy. The author's purpose was to criticize the western world's focus on Middle Eastern Muslim societies when other, more prominent, issues arise in other parts of the world.

Audience:

Anyone who is knowledgable about American foreign policies

Rhetorical Elements:

  The size of the two bombs relative to each other, suggest that Israel is a much more prominent threat than Iran. This difference in size delivers the irony of the western world's attention on Iran. All of the Western powers are shown as old, obese, fat men. Typically these images connote greed. But the fact that the United States says "Can't you see we're busy," indicates to me that they are overlooking Israel not because they don't care, but because they aren't aware of their weapons of mass destruction due to their intense focus on the middle east. Though the person trying to get the U.S's attention (Vanunu), suggests that they aren't aware due to a lack of information, but because they refuse to heed the warnings of such persons such as Vanunu, and look into his claims, perhaps this may be because of personal reasons.