Google sent me this link yesterday to The Post Chronicle's U.S. Falls In U.N. Trap On Iran by Cliff Kincaid [warning: egregious advertising, including popups]. Here's the part about Tom:

It's important to note that some don't believe in putting pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Thomas P.M. Barnett, the author of "The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century," writes that "I choose to see Iran's reach for the bomb as possibly the best thing that's happened to the Middle East peace process in decades."

Barnett is not a leftist by any stretch of the imagination. His bio says that he has been a Senior Strategic Researcher and Professor in the Warfare Analysis & Research Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the U.S. Naval War College.

Barnett says that Iran's possession of nuclear weapons would level the "playing field" by "finally allowing the Muslim Middle East to sit one player at the negotiating table as Israel's nuclear equal." He predicts, "Iran will get the bomb, no matter how the United States or its allies seek to prevent that outcome."

He urges a "grand bargain with Iran" in which "Iran gets the bomb, diplomatic recognition, the lifting of sanctions and the opening of trade, and its removal from the axis of evil." In return, Iran is supposed to stop supporting terrorism and will recognize Israel.

In a leap of faith, Barnett believes that Iran wouldn't use its nuclear weapons. He asks, "In which scenario do you think Tehran might risk it all by sponsoring a terrorist WMD strike against Israel or the West—when it has something to lose or nothing to lose?" The flaw in his thinking, of course, is the failure to take into account the religious mind-set of the Iranian president and his top advisers. Barnett seems to assume that the Iranian leaders are rational.

Tom's reply:

Where is the history of states acquiring the bomb and then using it irrationally? History has consistently proven just the opposite, even with Islamist regimes like Pakistan and quasi-theocracies like Israel. This is just another example of the sad American tendency to demonize all potential foes as irrational. You take down a country on either side of Iran and they reach for the bomb: who's being irrational or naive on that one?