The Iran Deal: A Bad Marriage

Newsmax reports that Iran, “in a dramatic move scheduled to coincide with the scrapping of the sanctions,” announced the release of five Americans including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian as part of a prisoner swap with the United States.

The notion of “peace” with Iran reminds me of an ill-advised marriage. Imagine trying to fix a bad relationship by getting married. It happens every day. A woman dates a guy who repeatedly cheats on her.

After getting caught one time too many, he feels badly and finally proposes marriage. She’s overjoyed — at least on the wedding day. But down the road, not so much. Her friends and family shake their heads over her inability to see the facts that are so obvious to everyone but her.


Americans who celebrate the so-called deal with Iran remind me of the woman celebrating marriage with a man she already knows is a philanderer. Of course, she can eventually divorce him (and, in my experience, most certainly will).

And the same will be true with Iran’s threats, repeatedly backed up by action, to develop and ultimately use nuclear weapons against Israel and even the United States. Except in that case, the stakes are much higher.

In December, even the fawning, appeasing Obama administration came close to reimposing sanctions on Iran in response to ongoing ballistic missile tests.

Iran violated the agreement even before it went into effect.

It’s sort of like the cheating guy sneaking-in a fling a few days before the wedding. It’s astonishing to watch such naïveté play out in the capital of a once (and still potentially) great nation.

It’s fair to ask if this is just ignorant naïveté or boldfaced treason on the part of our president and his officials.

Whose side is Obama really on?

For decades, Iran has been the number-one state sponsor of terrorism against American interests. They will not change simply because we sign some sort of agreement with them.

Sure, the totalitarian government wants the benefits of lifted sanctions and the unfreezing of assets. Inattentive people see this as an indication of normalcy. But Iran is not a free country. The lifting of sanctions does not promote commerce; it strengthens the power of dictators.

Our government chooses to ignore the blatant fact that Islam cannot, and will never be, peaceful. It’s in the nature of that ideology to impose force on the rest of the world. Either you’re a Muslim, or you’re an infidel. Period.

If you’re an infidel, you submit or die. It’s as simple as that.

Maybe not all Muslims are like this, but I don’t see any of them speaking out against it, probably because it is such a clear and central tenet of their creed.

Even if Iran were to magically change and follow the letter of this supposed agreement, it still sends a message to the ultimately more threatening ISIS, now consolidating power throughout the Middle East. That message states, “If you please, please like us, we will do whatever you say. And even if you continue to chant, ‘Death to America,’ we will still do whatever you say.”

If our government is foolish enough to think Iran will change, what about ISIS? Does waging this phony peace with Iran strengthen or weaken our ability to crush ISIS? The answer is dangerously obvious.

In psychology, we talk about denial. Denial is a subconscious method of ignoring relevant facts so you can reach a more comfortable and happy conclusion. But invariably, objective reality overrules wishes and hopes, so denial tends to be self-correcting.


I see it in my office every day: When a woman marries a cheating man, she’ll eventually learn the hard way that it was impossible for a piece of paper to alter one’s basic character.

When we play that game of denial with a totalitarian ideology like Islam, hell-bent on ruling the world with nuclear weapons, we will eventually learn the consequences the hard way. Thank you for that, Obama.

Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D., LCSW is a psychotherapist and author with a private practice in coastal Delaware. He is the author of “Bad Therapy, Good Therapy (and How to Tell the Difference).” For more of his reports, Go Here Now.