Readers of The Wall Street Journal who follow Bret Stephens’s weekly “Global View” foreign-affairs column have come to recognize him as a first-class commentator. Known for his insight, wisdom, and elegant boldness in analyzing an increasingly bewildering world, Stephens is also a member of the paper’s editorial board and serves as deputy editorial page editor for the international opinion pages.
Stephens joined The Wall Street Journal in 1998, taking a leave of absence from 2002-2004 to serve as editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. Named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2005, he won the 2008 Eric Breindel Prize for Excellence in Opinion Journalism and the 2010 Bastiat Prize for Journalism. In 2013 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary for what the Pulitzer board characterized as “his incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist.” He is also a regular panelist on Fox News Channel’s “Journal Editorial Report,” a weekly political talk show.
Stephens spoke with The Jewish Press about his new book “America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder” (Sentinel) and his views on foreign affairs, with an emphasis on the Middle East.
The Jewish Press: The extended deadline for the Iran nuclear talks prompted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to say, “No deal is better than a bad deal.” Do you think the Iranians might be saying, “No deal is better than a good deal,” since Iran has bought time to further its nuclear ambitions with little threat of tangible retribution?
I wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal back in May titled “Iran Does Not Want a Deal.” This is before the first extension, never mind the second extension. And my evidence was simple: listen to what the Ayatollah Khamenei was saying. The things he demands as non-negotiable put any potential deal out of reach. And that’s because Khamenei understands that when it comes to the West – that means the U.S. and this administration – he doesn’t face the possibility of any serious consequences for bad behavior. Why should he agree to an agreement that Iran violates surreptitiously when he can continue to develop his nuclear capabilities pretty much as he is now? So I’ve always been skeptical that any deal would emerge.
Iran’s nuclear threat has loomed for nearly a decade, and yet the closer Iran gets to nuclear capability the further we get from preventing it. What do you think is the reason for our failure to challenge Iran?
I think that with this president there is a kind of psychological yearning to remove himself from having to be responsible for whether Iran gets a bomb or not. And that’s why you’ve had the internationalization of the process. That’s also why you’ve had what amounts to a kick the can down the road approach, which simply shunts the problem into the hands of his successor.
But Obama hasn’t kicked the can down the road regarding healthcare and immigration, where he proved to be proactive.
Well, this gets me to the deeper point, which is that this administration has privately concluded that an Iran with nuclear weapons is something the world can live with; that it is not a catastrophic outcome; it is just an unfortunate outcome. This administration thinks that a truly catastrophic outcome would be an American military strike on Iran. That’s what they are seeking to prevent, not an Iran with nuclear weapons.
But they can’t quite bring themselves to say it because they’ve talked themselves into a bit of a corner by saying an Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable. So they effectively lack the courage of their genuine convictions. We have this kind of sham negotiating process because the administration just can’t bring itself to say what it believes, which is that a nuclear Iran can be contained. And a nuclear Iran in their view would be no worse than a nuclear Pakistan or a nuclear North Korea.
