Dick Cheney was firing on all cylinders Sunday on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopolous. Not only did he redirect the Obamacare discussion to the heart of ACA’s threat, but he also questioned the Obama administration’s political wherewithal to negotiate with Iran.

First, his comments on the dangers of the ACA (via ABC News’ follow-up piece):

“The system we have is the best in the world by far,” Cheney said, adding that many of the surgical procedures and devices from which he has benefitted have been gradually developed over several decades.

“What I worry about very much is that the current debate over Obamacare, that Obamacare itself, may damage that innovation machine that we’ve created out there,” he added.

This is a point that few are making in the mainstream media. Rather than remain distracted with Healthcare.gov glitch-o-mania, Cheney successfully refocused the conversation on the potential long-term damage of the law.

But Cheney’s bigger shots came during his discussion of the Obama administration's inability to make substantive progress with the Iranian government:

I don’t have a lot of confidence in the administration to be able to negotiate an agreement. I think sanctions offer some prospect of bringing the Iranians around. I’ve talked to my friends in that part of the region. I still know them, a lot of them, and they’re very fearful that the whole Iranian exercise is going to go the same way as the Syrian exercise; that is, that there will be bold talk from the administration. But in the final analysis, nothing effective will be done about the Iranian program.

The reasons Cheney suggests that the Obama administration will likely not be able to negotiate anything “effective” in Iran: The increasing sense that our allies in the region can “no longer count on us” and the reduction of forces in the Middle East:

I think our friends no longer count on us, no longer trust us and our adversaries don’t fear us. That was sort of the cornerstone and the basis of the U.S. ability and influence.

If we’re not heavily involved there, if we’ve turned our back on the region, if we’ve had a president who believes we overreacted to the terrorism attacks on 9/11, I think the Saudis, the Emirates, the Egyptians, many in that part of the world no longer have confidence in the United States.