Thomas Friedman, "A Good Bad Deal?": In Defense of a Second Holocaust

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Do you remember being told by the Obama administration, "No deal is better than a bad deal"? Those days are long forgotten.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "A Good Bad Deal?," would-be Middle East expert and Obama acolyte Thomas Friedman expresses amazement over Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei's success at finagling the United States into a flimsy nuclear deal:

"It’s still not clear if the last remaining obstacles to a deal will be resolved. But it is stunning to me how well the Iranians, sitting alone on their side of the table, have played a weak hand against the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain on their side of the table. When the time comes, I’m hiring Ali Khamenei to sell my house.

. . . .

[F]or the past year every time there is a sticking point — like whether Iran should have to ship its enriched uranium out of the country or account for its previous nuclear bomb-making activities — it keeps feeling as if it’s always our side looking to accommodate Iran’s needs. I wish we had walked out just once. When you signal to the guy on the other side of the table that you’re not willing to either blow him up or blow him off — to get up and walk away — you reduce yourself to just an equal and get the best bad deal nonviolence can buy."

But Obama didn't blow Khamenei off, and needless to say, Friedman blames George W. Bush for failing "to address this problem — when it was smaller" before Obama came to power.

Then comes the inevitable: In an attempt to justify this abomination, Friedman writes:

"But is it still possible to get a good bad deal — one that, while it does not require Iran to dismantle its nuclear enrichment infrastructure, shrinks that infrastructure for the next 10 to 15 years so Iran can’t make a quick breakout to a bomb? A deal that also gives us a level of transparency to monitor that agreement and gives international inspectors timely intrusive access to anywhere in Iran we suspect covert nuclear activity? One that restricts Iran from significantly upgrading its enrichment capacity over the next decade, as the bipartisan group of experts convened by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy proposed last week?

Yes. A good bad deal along such lines is still possible — and that will depend on the details now being negotiated at this 11th hour. Such a deal would enable the president to say to a skeptical Congress and Israel that he has gotten the best bad deal that an empty holster can buy, and that it has bought time for a transformation in Iran that is better than starting a war whose fallout no one can foretell."

Excuse me, Tom Terrific, but what happens after 10 years, when Iran mounts its nuclear weapons on an arsenal of ICBMs, whose construction isn't constrained by the agreement (assuming, of course that Iran doesn't cheat on the agreement before that time - which it will)? And in case you're not aware, the requirement of "anywhere, anytime access" has been dropped by John ("Assad is my dear friend") Kerry and "social worker turned nuclear negotiator" Wendy Sherman, who miserably failed to prevent North Korea from building atomic bombs. (After the deal is announced, do you think Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Zarif will plant a kiss on the cheek of Sherman, who is Jewish?)

Friedman concludes with a caveat:

"An Iran that is unshackled from sanctions and gets an injection of over $100 billion in cash will be even more superior in power than all of its Arab neighbors. Therefore, the U.S. needs to take the lead in initiating a modus vivendi between Sunni Arabs and Persian Shiites and curb Iran’s belligerence toward Israel. If we can’t help defuse those conflicts, a good bad deal could very easily fuel a wider regional war."

Curb "Iran’s belligerence toward Israel"? You mean, stop threatening Israel every week with annihilation? Actually, maybe it is Iran that should be seeking to curb Obama's belligerence toward Israel. Could it be that Obama's concessions to Khamenei, unfathomable even to Friedman, stem from his deep-seated hatred for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?

More to the point, It will only take one atomic bomb in the center of Israel to wipe the Jewish State off the map, as repeatedly threatened by the mullahs, and Obama's "good bad deal" is making this potential second Holocaust a more than conceivable consequence of this folly. Sorry, Tom, but there can be no rationalizing such a scenario.