While Chris Matthews's April 21 interview with President Obama was not brimming with obsequious fawning nor visible leg tingles, he nonetheless squandered an opportunity that a more assertive journalist might have taken to scrutinize President Obama, particularly on his handling of the Iranian nuclear negotiations.
Here the transcript of yesterday's interview:
MSNBC
Hardball
April 21, 2015
7:32 p.m. Eastern; 6 minutes, 40 seconds
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Welcome back to Hardball. Here now is my exclusive interview with President Obama.
Mr. President, we're all watching what's going on with the Iranian Navy. How do we -- it seems like the old Cuban missile crisis where we're trying to send signals back and forth. What signal are you sending as commander in chief to the Iranians?
President BARACK OBAMA: Well, we've been actually very straightforward to them. Right now their ships are in international waters. There's a reason why we keep some of our ships in the Persian Gulf region and that is to make sure that we maintain freedom of navigation, and what we've said to them is that if there are weapons delivered to factions within Yemen that could threaten navigation, that's a problem. And we're not sending them obscure messages. We send them very direct messages about it. My hope is generally that we can settle down the situation in Yemen. That's always been a fractious country with a lot of problems. It's very poor, and right now there are a lot of people inside of Yemen suffering. What we need to do is bring all the parties together and find a political arrangement. It is not solved by having another proxy war fought inside of Yemen, and, you know, we've indicated to the Iranians that they need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
MATTHEWS: How do you keep a coordination with the Egyptians and the Saudi navies. They are also in this area and they might engage with the Iranians. How do you avoid a confrontation there?
OBAMA: Ultimately when comes to the seas we are obviously the dominant force and we're coordinating closely with all of our allies in the region, sending a message that rather than another conflict in the region, we need to settle this now.
MATTHEWS: What about the Iranians and the Russians? They just conducted -- they are going to buy the S-300s. They are going to use surface-to-air missiles. Doesn't that put us in a situation and the Israelis in a situation where if they do weaponize their nuclear program they will have a fantastic defense system against any attack on their nuclear facilities?
OBAMA: Well, you know, this is a sale pending for six years. In fact, the Russians stopped it at my request as we were putting together the sanctions that ultimately brought the Iranians to the table. You know, it's of concern. We object to it particularly because right now we're still negotiating to make sure that they don't get a nuclear weapon, but as I said before, Chris, we have to keep this in perspective. Our defense budget's just a little under $600 billion. Theirs is a little over $17 billion. Even if they've got some air defense systems, you know, if we had to, we could penetrate them. Now, my goal is not to resolve conflicts and tensions in the region through more war. My goal is to make sure that, you know, we are able to negotiate a deal that we can verify that ensures that Israel is safe and ensures that our neighbors like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries are safe and that there's not a nuclear arms race in the region, but ultimately it's going to be up to the Iranians to make sure that they -- that they come to the table prepared to memorialize what has already been agreed to.
There are details of that to be worked out and they could walk away over these next three months, but if in fact we get a deal that the world community can verify and trust, then that's the best path forward. It's not going to eliminate all the other conflicts that we may have with Iran including what we're seeing with respect to Yemen or what's happening in Syria, but what it does do is create a climate and an atmosphere in which potentially we can start lessening some of the tensions in the area.
MATTHEWS: Another area I know you care about, I certainly do, is Africa and, your feelings of watching the refugees, 950 people drowning, just trying to find a life, and then also Kenya, a country we all care about, a very moderate country, pro-Western, getting terrorized, those college kids who are the hope of their families, getting killed because they're Christians. Are you going to still go to Kenya?
OBAMA: I am still going to go to Kenya. Look, it's a heartbreak situation. There's a lot of tumult and chaos around the world right now, and, part of our goal as the world's leading superpower is to work with partner countries to try to resolve conflicts, to be ruthless in going after terrorism, but we're not going do that by ourselves and we're not going to do it just by deploying more Marines in every country that has these problems.
We've got to build up the capacity in these areas so that they're not recruiting centers and safe havens for terrorist activity. We're seeing some success. In other areas we're still having problems. Somalia is actually improving from where it was 20 years ago but it's still not where it needs to be and it still has these hot beds of terrorist activity that spill over into Kenya.
When it comes to the refugee problem from Libya, again, that results from the fact that you have tribal conflicts and in some cases factions or religious differences inside of Libya that are creating chaos, but Libya actually has a lot of oil, has a lot of gas, a relatively small population. They could be a successful country, so what we're seeing in a lot of these areas is failures of governance.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
OBAMA: Governments that have no civil society. They are not creating the kinds of economic policies that work for people, and our solutions are going to be ones that we have to shape with the world community, with the region, and some of it is going to take time. But I always tell people that we have to maintain some perspective on this. The Middle East and North Africa are going through changes that we haven't seen in our generation.
I think the Islamic world is going through a process where they have to isolate and push out the kind of extremism that we've seen expressed by ISIL, and that's a generational project.
What our job is in the meantime is to make sure that we're protecting Americans, we're protecting our interests, that we're maintaining things like freedom of navigation, and that we're partnering with the best elements of those communities in order to be successful. It's going to take some time, but I remind people that, you know, there actually is probably less war and less violence around the world today than there might have been 30, 40 years ago. It doesn't make it any less painful.
MATTHEWS: Right.
OBAMA: But, but things can get better. We just have to be vigilant and we have to have strong partners.
MATTHEWS: Thanks, Mr. President.
OBAMA: Appreciate it.
MATTHEWS: Thanks for your time.
OBAMA: Thank you, you bet.
