Ben Rhodes, the talkative aide who is in charge of “strategic communications” for President Obama’s national security team, by Monday had managed to revive opposition to the president’s Iran nuclear deal, alienate journalists supposedly rooting for the president, raise hackles in Israel and even trigger a White House swipe at Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.
How’s that for “strategerie,” as George W. Bush might have said?
Mr. Rhodes, who was the president’s back-channel negotiator on Cuba and had a hand in the infamous Benghazi “talking points,” tried to defend himself from criticism after his comments in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine profile, in which he belittled the Washington press corps and bragged that he created a media “echo chamber” to sell the administration’s foreign policy to the public. The article said the administration’s story of the Iran deal “was largely manufactured” to convince Americans that talks did not begin until 2013, after moderates were elected in Tehran.
In a post on Medium.com Sunday night, Mr. Rhodes attempted to correct the record by saying Mr. Obama made no secret about seeking a deal with Iran when he ran for president in 2008 and that talks prior to 2013 didn’t achieve any results.
“We believed deeply in the case that we were making: about the effectiveness of the deal, about the value of diplomacy, and about the stakes involved,” Mr. Rhodes wrote. “It wasn’t ’spin,’ it’s what we believed and continue to believe, and the hallmark of the entire campaign was to push out facts.”
Top Republicans in Congress seized on the episode to highlight weaknesses in the administration’s policy toward Iran and the Middle East in general. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, Arizona Republican, said it’s “long past time for the Obama administration to disenthrall itself with the dangerous illusion of a new relationship with Iran and adopt a comprehensive strategy to counter Iran’s malign influence and protect America’s national security interests.”
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“The spin campaign continues as the Obama administration ignores repeated Iranian provocations that threaten its narrative — the detention of U.S. sailors by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in clear violation of international law, rockets fired near a U.S. aircraft carrier, ballistic missile tests in violation of United Nations resolutions, and continued support for terrorism and the murderous Assad regime that is destabilizing the Middle East and undermining American interests,” Mr. McCain said, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, said the administration “can spin it any way it likes, but this was a bad deal.”
“Before this president leaves office, we must do everything possible to prevent his administration from making further concessions to Iran,” Mr. Ryan said Monday in an op-ed. “This includes blocking any attempt to make it easier for the mullahs in Tehran to conduct their trade in dollars.”
The speaker said the regime in Tehran has only grown more belligerent since the deal was made, contrary to the administration’s reassurances.
“The defiant and emboldened regime in Tehran continues to sponsor terrorism across the region, test-fire ballistic missiles inscribed with ’Death to Israel’ and abuse the basic human rights of its citizens,” Mr. Ryan said. “For all its stagecraft, this administration’s deal has fallen flat in front of one key audience: our allies.”
Mr. Rhodes’ comments are causing blowback in Israel, where the government opposes the deal. The Times of Israel said the revelation proved that “the background to nuclear talks with Iran was misrepresented in order to sell the impression of a more moderate Iranian regime and thus gain greater American public support for an agreement.”
Journalists in Washington, who have often been accused of being too cozy with the Obama administration, expressed irritation Monday with Mr. Rhodes’ description of the press corps as a collection of inexperienced youngsters spoon-fed information by the White House. “They literally know nothing,” he said.
A network television reporter for NBC called it “quite a put-down” of the White House press corps. A veteran radio reporter, Mark Knoller of CBS News, told White House press secretary Josh Earnest, “We’re the ones talking to the 27-year-old [administration] spokesman.”
Mr. Earnest didn’t apologize for Mr. Rhodes, saying “there’s built-in friction between the White House press corps and the White House that is always going to be there.”
Mr. Rhodes said on Media.com, “A review of the press from that period will find plenty of tough journalism and scrutiny. We had to answer countless questions about every element of the deal and our broader Iran policy from reporters.”
The White House also said Monday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not part of the foreign policy “blob” in Washington that was disparaged by Mr. Rhodes in the magazine interview. He included Mrs. Clinton and former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in that category.
Mr. Earnest said he had never heard Mr. Rhodes use the term and that Mrs. Clinton provided valuable advice to the president as his top diplomat.
But Mrs. Clinton, who clashed with Mr. Obama over the Iraq War, also was lumped by the White House into the category of presidential advisers who too often turn to military solutions. He included Mrs. Clinton, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Vice President Joseph R. Biden in that category.
“What the president has sought to do is to incorporate that advice, but also to make sure that he’s thinking smartly about the most effective way to use U.S. influence, to use the United States military, to advance our interests around the globe,” Mr. Earnest said. “There is a tendency that’s undeniable, on the part of the foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C., to turn to the military option, in the president’s view, often prematurely.”
The president will convene a meeting Tuesday morning with Mr. Rhodes and the rest of his national security team in the top-secret White House situation room to review the administration’s efforts to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State. The session is the latest in a series of National Security Council meetings in recent months on the campaign against the terrorist group.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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