By Noah
Beck
Dear
President Obama,
You’ve been a great friend for the last six years and, to
express our appreciation, we’d like to acknowledge some of your many helpful
actions:
1) In 2009, our presidential election results were so dubious
that millions of brave, pro-democracy protesters risked their lives to
demonstrate throughout our country. When our Basij paramilitary force
brutalized them, you kept your response irrelevantly
mild for the sake of
“engaging” us. That surely helped Iranians understand the risks of
protesting our “free” election of 2012 (involving our
eight handpicked candidates). It was indeed a very orderly
rubberstamp.
2) After eight years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, we KNEW you’d fall
for the smiles of his successor, President Hassan Rouhani! Human rights abuses have actually
worsened under his rule and his polished charm only makes him
better at duping the world into acquiescing to our nukes, so we LOVE how you’ve
overlooked these facts.
3) You’ve been unilaterally weakening
the sanctions against us by simply not enforcing them (which
reassures us that you’re desperate to avoid any real confrontation).
4) You’ve threatened to thwart any Congressional attempt to
limit your nuclear generosity by simply lifting sanctions without
Congressional approval. Good stuff!
5) You isolated Israel on the issue of
how close we are to a nuclear capability – we love how your
estimates are so much laxer than theirs are!
6) The diplomatic snubs and betrayals of Israel by your
administration have been EPIC. We couldn’t have asked for more – from your humiliation of Prime Minister
Netanyahu in 2010, to Secretary of State John Kerry’s betrayal of Israel
during Operation Protective Edge, to calling Netanyahu a “chickenshit” a
few weeks ago, without even apologizing later.
We found it hilariously ironic that your administration’s accusation of Israeli
cowardice was made anonymously! And, FYI, Netanyahu is actually the only leader
in the world with the guts to defy us, respond to Syrian border violations,
enforce his own declared lines, etc., so we thought that this was particularly
priceless.
7) Speaking of enforcing red lines, we LOVE how you backed off
yours, after our Syrian buddy, Basher Assad, used chemical weapons on his own
people. That was a very helpful signal to everyone that we need not take your
threats too seriously (contrary to those scary words you issued in 2012 about
how stopping our nukes militarily was still an option, unlike containment, and
how you don’t bluff). But we
understood back then that you were trying to get re-elected, so we didn’t take
it personally.
8) It was adorably naive of you (in 2011) to request so politely that we give back
your drone that went down onIranian soil. In fact, your request was
so quaint that we couldn’t resist recently showcasing our knock-off based on
that drone.
9) Fortunately, you don’t take our Supreme Leader
Khamenei seriously when he tweets out his plan for destroying
Israel (why let our true motives get in the way of a fantastic
nuclear deal, right)?
10) We LOVE how you obsess over Israel building
apartments in Jerusalem because it’s the perfect distraction
from our deal.
11) You’ve been pressuring Israel to retreat from more disputed
territory, effectively rewarding Palestinians for launching the third missile
war against Israel from Gaza in five years last summer and, more recently, the third Intifidah inside Israel in
17 years. You’re almost as awesome as the
European appeasers who think Palestinian bellicosity merits statehood!
12) It’s so cute of you to write us these letters asking for
help against ISIS and showing us how desperately you want a nuclear deal. All
we had to do was hint at an ISIS-for-nukes exchange and
you got so excited!
13) You’re smart to go behind everyone’s backs when dealing with
us. That’s a bummer that your top aide, Ben Rhodes, was caught saying how a
nuclear accord with us is as important to you as “healthcare.” But
we’ve got the perfect slogan to sell our deal to Americans: “If you like your
nukes, you can keep them.”
14) What’s really awesome about the deal that we’re
“negotiating” is that it allows us to continue nuclear enrichment but makes it
even harder for Israel to take any military action against our nuclear program.
And our agreement will give the press even more ammunition against such an attack.
We already know about the world media’s anti-Israel bias –
they can’t even get a simple story about
vehicular terrorism against Israelis correct. Even we were surprised
at how The Guardian writes
accurate headlines when Canada suffers an Islamist car attack but not when Israel does). So
if you accept our nukes and Israel then attacks them, the media will be even
harsher on Israel (even though the world will be silently relieved, if Israeli
courage succeeds at neutralizing what scared everyone else).
But we kind of feel sorry for you, because nobody takes you
seriously and you're a lame duck now. Putin is unabashedly conquering
neighboring countries while going all Cold War on you with 40 provocative security incidents
involving Western nations and Russian flights into the Gulf of
Mexico (despite your promise of greater flexibility after your 2012
reelection). The North Koreans are closer than ever to
building nuclear missiles. China is dangerously testing disputed borders with
India, growing increasingly assertive in the contested Spratly
archipelago, and stealing your sensitive defense and corporate data. Oh, and
ISIS has grown into a veritable jihadi lovefest thanks to your excellent strategy
against them.
Indeed, your foreign policy seems like a massive FAIL, but we’re
super ready to help! Your trusted Russian friends have
suggested continuing our nuclear talks past the November 24th deadline,
and we’re totally down with more enrichment time (that’s another reason we've stonewalled the IAEA’s
investigations into our nukes), so count us in on this extension
like the one from last July (and any future ones). Hey, it’s good for you too:
an extension (or agreement) looks so much better than calling out our
manipulations and issuing more empty threats to stop us, right?
And after everyone sees the killer deal that you’re giving us,
the world’s bad actors will line up to talk to you, with demands of
their own that you can try to satisfy in the hope that they’ll stop opposing
your national interests so much.
Overall, we appreciate you even more than we did President
Carter, because getting nukes is WAY COOLER than holding 52 American diplomats
and citizens hostage for 444 days.
With our deepest gratitude,
Your Friends in the Iranian Regime
p.s. We’re glad you didn’t take any personal offense when one of
our officials used the N-word to describe you back
in 2010. He actually has nothing but respect for you, as do
we.
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical
issues in the Middle East.
