RUTHFULLY YOURS

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Chuck Hagel was right: The Obama administration’s policy on Iran’s nuclearization is containment, not prevention. The secretary of defense let that one slip at his confirmation hearings in January, and the media played it as a stumble by an intellectually overmatched nominee.

But it wasn’t a stumble. It was a gaffe—an accidental, embarrassing act of Washington truth telling—by a guy who doesn’t do insincerity nearly as well as his boss.

This much was apparent from the revealing performance Barack Obama delivered last week at the Brookings Institution, where he was interviewed by Israeli-American entertainment mogul Haim Saban on the subject of the Iranian nuclear deal. It was just the kind of Q&A the president likes doing: Mr. Saban wrote an op-ed last year explaining why he planned to vote for Mr. Obama and donated more than $1 million to Democrat-backing super-PACs. In return, the president named Mr. Saban’s wife Cheryl to a U.N. post.

Maybe that’s why the president’s answers contained more than the usual quotient of half-truth, misdirection and puffery: It’s easier to sucker a sycophant.

Here are a few of my favorite Obamisms from the interview:

1) “We are stopping the advancement of the Arak facility,” he said, referring to Iran’s construction of a plutonium reactor.

The reality, as Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif bluntly pointed out, is that “construction will continue” at Arak. Tehran has merely undertaken not to fuel the reactor—assuming that’s even an option for the time being—for at least six months.

2) “There’s nothing in this agreement or document that grants Iran a right to enrich,” Mr. Obama said later on, referring to Iran’s enrichment of uranium in 10,000 centrifuges.

The reality is that the Geneva deal allows Iran to continue to enrich uranium (though it has to oxidize the produced uranium, a reversible process), and it specifies that a final accord “would involve a mutually defined enrichment program.” So Geneva doesn’t “grant” Iran a right to enrich. It merely accepts it de facto and envisions it de jure.

3) “It is precisely because of the international sanctions and the coalition that we were able to build internationally that the Iranian people responded by saying, we need a new direction in how we interact with the international community and how we deal with this sanctions regime,” Mr. Obama said early in the interview.

Except the president isn’t quite sure he believes in, or can keep track of, what he’s saying. “The idea that Iran, given everything we know about their history, would just continue to get more and more nervous about more sanctions and military threats, and ultimately just say, okay, we give in—I think does not reflect an honest understanding of the Iranian people or the Iranian regime.”

Well, which is it? Are the Iranians susceptible to sanctions and military pressure or not?

4) “When the president of the United States says he doesn’t take any options off the table, that should be taken seriously. And I think I have a track record over the last five years that indicates that that should be taken seriously.” Mr. Obama then added: “I said it’s a problem for Syria to have chemical weapons that it uses on its own citizens. And when we had definitive proof that it had, I indicated my willingness potentially to take military action.”

At the Battle of Thermopylae, it is recorded that the Spartan King Leonidas indicated his willingness potentially to die for Greece. At Gettysburg, Union soldiers gave the last full measure of their potential indication.

And if the Iranians violate the present accord? “I won’t go into details,” Mr. Obama said. “The options that I’ve made clear I can avail myself of, including a military option, is one that we would consider and prepare for.”

Let’s break this down for the real world. The president will not use military force under any circumstances and will resist efforts to resume sanctions in the event a final accord fails. Instead, he has accepted the principle of a nuclear-capable Iran; he only asks Tehran that its nuclear breakout time be in the range of six to 12 months as opposed to, say, two to six.

Perhaps this is supposed to be a comfort to an Israel, a Saudi Arabia, or a Bahrain. But they understand the game Iran intends to play: accept modest, time-limited and reversible constraints on their nuclear program. Exchange them for broad concessions of fact and principle by the U.S. Eventually, the West will get used to the idea of Iran with borderline nuclear capability gradually extending its influence in the region as American influence recedes. We’re bored with the Middle East anyway.

The argument is now being made that a containment policy beats the unforeseen risks associated with stopping Iran by force. People who dine in Washington eateries that only recently Tehran made plans to blow up should not concede this point so cavalierly. If Iran was prepared to aggress that way without the benefit of a nuclear umbrella, just imagine how it will behave with one.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com