The willful ignorance of the hawks who oppose the Iran nuclear deal

Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is hardly perfect. But it's by far the best of bad options.

Secretary of State John Kerry.

Conservative foreign policy hawks are blasting the Obama administration's preliminary nuclear deal with Iran as nothing more than a "series of cascading concessions" that have sold America and its allies in the Middle East short. These conservatives are probably right that the administration could have negotiated a better deal. Still, contrary to their claims, a bad deal is better than no deal. That's because all the other options — maintaining sanctions or launching military strikes — would be less effective in curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.

There are many details of the deal that have yet to be finalized, and there is a non-trivial chance that the whole thing will collapse. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared this week that he won't go for a deal that lifts the sanctions gradually rather than fully and right off the bat.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.