{"id":9908,"date":"2015-07-10T07:06:25","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T12:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9908"},"modified":"2015-07-10T07:06:25","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T12:06:25","slug":"framing-iran-thomas-friedmans-war-wish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9908","title":{"rendered":"Framing Iran: Thomas Friedman\u2019s War Wish"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/07\/10\/framing-iran-thomas-friedmans-war-wish\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Framing Iran: Thomas Friedman\u2019s War Wish<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"post_meta\">Thomas Friedman, the\u00a0<em>New York Times\u00a0<\/em>op-ed-page representative of\u00a0the foreign-policy elite, is unhappy with how the soon-to-be-completed Iran nuclear talks are going. He says President Obama, like his predecessor George W. Bush, hasn\u2019t been tough enough. Obama holds all the cards, Friedman says, but somehow the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dictating terms. He\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/07\/01\/opinion\/thomas-friedman-a-good-bad-deal.html?_r=1\">writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>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\u2026..<\/p>\n<p>For the past year every time there is a sticking point \u2026 it keeps feeling as if it\u2019s always our side looking to accommodate Iran\u2019s needs. I wish we had walked out just once. When you signal to the guy on the other side of the table that\u00a0<em>you\u2019re not willing to either blow him<\/em>\u00a0<em>up\u00a0<\/em>or blow him off \u2014 to get up and walk away \u2014 you reduce yourself to just an equal and get the best bad deal\u00a0<em>nonviolence\u00a0<\/em>can buy. [Emphasis added.]<\/p>\n<p>Friedman glosses over the fact that it is not \u201chim\u201d (foreign minister Javad Zarif perhaps?) who would be blown up in a war against Iran. It would be countless ordinary Iranians, who have done nothing to harm the American people. Those same innocent people would be harmed, admittedly in more subtle ways, if the P5+1 \u201cblew off\u201d Iranian negotiators because that would mean no relief from long-standing U.S.-led sanctions that have devastated the Iranian economy, creating food and medicine shortages among other inhumane consequences. Sanctions are acts of war. Would someone tell Friedman?<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Framing Iran: Thomas Friedman\u2019s War Wish Thomas Friedman, the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0op-ed-page representative of\u00a0the foreign-policy elite, is unhappy with how the soon-to-be-completed Iran nuclear talks are going. He says President Obama, like his predecessor George W. Bush, hasn\u2019t been tough enough. Obama holds all the cards, Friedman says, but somehow the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dictating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5493,441,1426,2583,584,655,1109,1143,862,6163],"class_list":["post-9908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-counterpunch","tag-iran","tag-misinformation","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-obama","tag-propaganda","tag-sanctions","tag-thomas-friedman","tag-war","tag-warmongering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9909,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9908\/revisions\/9909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}