Steve Hayes vs. Bob Woodward on Iran Deal: ‘A Deal for a Deal’s Sake’
HAYES: “The administration sees the deal itself as the accomplishment. It almost doesn’t even matter what the details of the deal are at this point. They want a deal for the sake of having a deal, largely because people will say this is an achievement, having gotten the deal. And to do this, to get to this point, the administration is willing to just shrug off or set aside.“
WOODWARD: “I think that’s really unfair. I mean, they haven’t been negotiating all this time just because they want a deal. They’ve been negotiating about the particulars.”
HAYES: “There’s no question they’ve been negotiating about the particulars.”
WOODWARD: “There are certain things they want to get. And I can share your cynicism about some of this, but I think John Kerry’s really worked hard on this and there is a potential to --”
HAYES: “I don’t even suggest that they are not negotiating anything. I mean to suggest that they know that they want to get a deal because they’ll be praised for ending up with a deal. And as we’ve seen in other deals that the administration has struck, that it doesn’t matter what the details of the deal are. They want the deal for the sake of having the deal. The diplomacy is the end — do you think they’re going to have a deal?”
WOODWARD: “Well, who knows? I mean some of it we know, some of it we don’t. One reality here, which you know well, is the intelligence community in the United States is looking over their shoulder, and it’s quite likely they’ll blow the whistle on some sort of deal that doesn’t give them the sort of verification that they want --” [crosstalk]