Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has begun doing damage control following last week’s New York Times profile on how he spun reporters to sell the Iran deal.
In a Medium post published Sunday night, Rhodes hinted at a multi-pronged effort to defend controversial comments, such as the one about trying to keep news of Iran’s capture of U.S. sailors quiet until after President Obama delivered his State of the Union address in January.
“There are many issues raised in an article of this length, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to respond to those topics in the weeks and months to come,” Rhodes wrote.
The profile from last week quoted Rhodes at length on his methods for getting young reporters to buy in to the White House’s version of events leading up to the Iran deal. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he told the paper. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
The profile also explains how the administration tried to make it look as though the negotiations began with Iran only after President Hassan Rouhani was elected, when in truth, it began with hardliners before that.
In his rebuttal, Rhodes said there was nothing secret about the administration’s desire to pursue an agreement with Tehran, noting that Obama first discussed it during his 2008 campaign. The administration confirmed seeking back channels of communications with the Islamic Republic in 2012, but didn’t get serious until after Rouhani’s election in 2013, he said.
“Yes, we had discussions with the Iranians before that, but they did not get anywhere,” Rhodes wrote.
The administration’s communications efforts on behalf of the deal were neither secret nor spin, Rhodes said. It’s “what we believed and continue to believe; and the hallmark of the entire campaign was to push out facts.”
Rhodes argued that critical press and opposition analysis was abundant.
“Indeed, I hardly remember last summer as a time of glowing reviews about the Iran deal,” he recalled about the lead up to its ratification.
“Today, Iran verifiably cannot obtain a nuclear weapon,” Rhodes concluded. “That, more than anything I or anyone else can say, makes the case for the Iran deal.”
