Welcome to the commentary magazine, Dilly podcast.

Today is Monday, January 18th, 2021. I'm John Pudhortz, the editor of commentary magazine.

Christine Rosen is off for the next couple of days with me as always associate editor

Noah Rothman, high Noah. Hi John. Executive editor, a Greenwald, hi A. Hi John.

And for the first time on our podcast and for the first time in more than 20 years on the

commentary mast head are newly minted contributing editor Brett Stevens. Hi Brett. Hi John,

it's actually more like 25 years, but yes. Well, you know, if you guys know Brett, he's

pretter naturally young looking. So unlike me, I look like I'm 80. He's in his mid 40's,

he looks like he's 20. So I keep forgetting how old he is. But Brett began his career at

commentary right out of college and has rejoined us while continuing as the Pulitzer Prize

winning columnist that he is a contributor to the New York Times and is now contributing

it or commentary. We're here to discuss Brett's blockbuster piece in the February 2021

issue, which is available for your reading pleasure at commentary magazine.com, the title

of which is memo to President Biden, please don't mess up the Abraham Accords. So Brett,

what is it that Joe Biden might be in danger of messing up? Well, I mean, many things, but

what I'm hoping is that in at least this one case, he will have the good sense to not

look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth to accept that the Trump administration had

a signal triumph in the Abraham Accords, which as I'm sure everyone listening to this

podcast knows refers to the peace deals that Israel struck last September with Bahrain

and the United Arab Emirates. But more generally means peace accords that it's negotiating

with Morocco, with Sudan, with Oman, and possibly even with Saudi Arabia effectively spelling

the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And what I argue in the piece, John, is that these

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