More tough-guy nonsense from Thomas Friedman

I do wish the man would stick to global warming and renewable energy, where he's got something useful to say.  His latest screed about playing tough with Iran, on the other hand, is not useful, at all.

TF claims that the nuclear-enrichment program is being used as leverage by a fanatic, "anti-Semitic" regime that cares not at all that its public is being brutalized  UN sanctions, and that the public would likely crack - or rise up - under new sanctions, not to mention an Israeli attack.  TF's advice to Robert Gates: keep that idea that Israel might "do something crazy" foremost in the minds of the Iranian leadership.

TF forgets (or ignores) the following:

• the Iranian public hugely support their nuclear program as a right to which international law entitles them, and as something that an advanced, first-tier nation (a status to which, Iranians believe, history entitles them) ought to possess, without outside interference.

• No amount of bullying or scare-tactics is likely to get the regime to back down.  TF knows nothing of Iranian cultural values or psychology.
• The regime is not "anti-Semitic."  Its president idiotically rejects the Holocaust, but many members of the Iranian leadership feel that he's an idiot for doing so, and know that he's only hurting their country's international image by spouting off the way he does.  Moreover, if TF were to take the time to read the recent columns of his op-ed colleague Roger Cohen, who visited Iran - and some of its Jewish community - only a few months ago, he'd know that the regime is not anti-Semitic.  It is, however, anti-Zionist, and anti-Israel, as are a majority of people throughout the Middle East.