Bret Stephens – a sometimes funny columnist – calls the
Obama administration pompously impotent which means it is a eunuch pretending
to be a stud. And he calls the Iranians obstreperous which means they are
defiant and recalcitrant. Stephens follows with this: “The only thing Iran has to
fear is an Israeli military strike,” and supports the argument with this: “The
Israelis may sit still through all this,” but he warns that: “Mr. Kerry
shouldn't count on it.”
Stephens does all that in an article he wrote under the
title: “Iran Doesn't Want a Deal” and the subtitle: “Strike three for John
Kerry's diplomacy,” which he published in the Wall Street Journal on May 13,
2014. So, you want to know: What's this all about? You comb the article to find
out, and detect telltale indications of what you might call a psychological
inversion. That is, the funny columnist seems to wish that Israel were in the strong position that Iran is in; and he wishes that Iran were in the weak position that Israel is in.
He cannot perform a miracle to accomplish all that physically, so he fantasizes
about it and spreads the fantasy via the Journal.
An inversion is usually hard to make when the two characters
you wish to invert are too far apart on the scale that spans the spectrum from
good to evil. Because he always portrayed Israel
as being at the extreme end of the good, and portrayed Iran as being
at the extreme end of evil, he has no choice but to backtrack and bring them
closer to each other, thus avoid the failure of his inversion. But this
necessitates that he finds someone else to play the role of evil; and he does
that by choosing John Kerry of the Obama administration.
In fact, he starts the article by attacking the Kerry
record, saying that the man struck twice already this year, and that he is
about to strike a third time. When and where will this happen? Here is the
answer: “This week, U.S.
negotiators and the P5+1 will meet with Iranian negotiators to work out details
of a final nuclear agreement.” This introduces the Iranians to the readers
which is what he wants. But he also needs to portray them – for this one
occasion – a little less villainous than he used to. He finds a way to do that
without losing face by reporting on what someone else thinks of the Iranians.
This is how he does it: “There's been a buzz … with Western
diplomats extolling the unfussy way their Iranian counterparts have approached
the talks. Positions are said to be converging; technical solutions are being
discussed. Iranian foreign minister said there was '50 to 60 percent agreement'
… All this is supposed to bode well for a deal to be concluded by the July
deadline.”
And this is the point at which Stephens first transposes the
image of Iran and that of Israel , then separates them, attributing to Iran the evil particulars usually attached to Israel ; and to Israel
the good particulars usually attached to Iran . Thus, he goes on to give Iran the advice that the world has been giving
to Israel
all along: “If the Iranians are wise, they'll take whatever is on the table. It
can sweeten the terms later on through the usual two-step of provocation and
negotiation.”
To reinforce this view, he sticks in there a paragraph that
is usually written in conjunction with Israel ,
but where he should have written Israel ,
he writes Iran .
Thus, in the interest of clarity, I hereby re-invert the inversion and write
the paragraph as it ought to have been written in the first place. Here it is:
“But Israel
is not wise. It is merely cunning. And fanatical. Also greedy, thanks to a long
history of being deceitful and still getting its way without having to pay a
serious price. So it will allow this round of negotiations to fail and bargain
for an extension. It will get the extension and then play for time again. There
will never be a final deal.”
This done, he goes back to the old habit of scaring the
readers about Iran 's
intention. Speaking about the head of its Atomic Energy Organization, Stephens
says: “he wants Iran
to produce 30 tons [of enriched uranium] to fuel the civilian nuclear plant.
That's 30 tons a year. A single ton suffices for a single atomic bomb.” The
thing is that this last comparison is meaningless. It is so because to operate
a 1000 megawatt power station with hydrocarbon fuel, you need somewhere between
1.5 and 2 million tons of it a year depending on the station's efficiency and
its rate of down time. This is the equivalent of about one million tons of TNT
which is enough to make something like 50 Hiroshima
size bombs – one a week. Given that chemical explosives are made with
hydrocarbons, are we going to ban them too?