Mike Huckabee’s overblown rhetoric on the Iran deal

Mike Huckabee is under attack for a comment he made about the Iran nuclear deal. Huckabee stated:

This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.

The comment is over-the-top for several reasons. First, it is too harsh. It’s Iran that may intend to incinerate Israelis, not President Obama. In my opinion, Obama has made a bad policy decision about how best to deal with the Iranian threat. That’s not the same thing as marching Israelis to the oven door.

Second, Iran is very likely to obtain nuclear weapons — and thus the capacity to incinerate Israel — with or without this deal. The main problem with the deal is that it allows Iran to get nukes AND enriches the regime, thus increasing its ability to cause non-nuclear mischief and decreasing the likelihood of regime change. That’s not the same thing as marching Israelis to the oven door.

Third, Huckabee assumes Israeli helplessness. This caused Israel Katz, Israel’s Transportation Minister and a close ally of Prime Minister Netanyahu, to object:

Respected Mr. Huckabee: nobody marches the Jews to ovens anymore. To this end we established the State of Israel and the IDF; and, if need be, we will know how to defend ourselves, by ourselves.

Mike Huckabee’s heart is in the right place when it comes to assessing the Iran deal and he’s right in insisting that Congress should reject it. But perhaps due to the demands of a presidential run, his rhetoric is overblown.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses