https://wikileaks.org//dnc-emails/emailid/6020
HOW THE WHITE HOUSE DUPED EVERYONE ON THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
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DAVID SAMUELS of the New York Times magazine gets inside the thinking of Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, the most influential foreign policy aide to President Barack Obama, in a lengthy profile that has some in the national security establishment upset over revelations of just how Rhodes and his team sold the Iran nuclear deal.
The upshot is that Rhodes created a narrative that elections in Iran brought in a more moderate regime that was open to reaching an agreement on terms more favorable to the U.S., a storyline that made the pact more politically palatable and obscured the most consequential intentions. The truth, Samuels reports, is that most of the terms had been worked out in 2012, before the election and long before there was any public discussion of it. Rhodes and his team used friendly think-tankers and mostly unwitting reporters to sell a false tale to the American public about the origin and meaning of the agreement, he writes.
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"By eliminating the fuss about Iran’s nuclear program, the administration hoped to eliminate a source of structural tension between the two countries, which would create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and Turkey. With one bold move, the administration would effectively begin the process of a large-scale disengagement from the Middle East."
—David Samuels/NYT Magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html?_r=1)
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You have to read the whole story (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html?_r=1) to get a real feel for the level of manipulation — and the specific journalists who were manipulated — in the selling of the Iran deal.
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The conservative writer JOHN PODHORETZ nails why the seemingly glowing profile of Rhodes is a double-edged sword.
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"Little did these denizens of Rhodes’ echo chamber know their loyalty would be seen as servility and would become the subject of post-victory gloating. 'We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else,' Rhodes says [in the Samuels piece]. 'So we knew the tactics that worked.'"
—John Podhoretz/NY Post (http://nypost.com/2016/05/05/playing-the-press-and-the-public-for-chumps-to-sell-the-iran-deal/)