Quote Originally Posted by Abdula
Deidara’s goal was to separate Naruto from Kakashi. Once again this battle was between Deidara and Kakashi. Without Kakashi, Naruto would’ve been defeated in about 2 minutes.
Or Deidara might be dead, which is something Kakashi failed to accomplish. After all, we have no idea how good Naruto actually would be in a real fight to death match now post time skip. He might have needed to go kyuubi coated, but if he had, Deidara probably would have been dead meat or forced to retreat, because he wouldn't have had any nice seal tags to subdue Naruto.

Although it's hard to judge because the one armed Deidara had enabled the cheat mode giving him unlimited clay (that was still all the time running out according to him, yet never did), so who knows, he might have molded a nuclear bomb and defeated kyuubi Naruto that way if needed.