Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sparred Tuesday over whether the White House, led by national security adviser Ben Rhodes, misled the public about the nuclear agreement with Iran in order to sell the deal to Congress and the public.
A panel of Iran experts invited to testify in Rhodes’ stead by committee Republicans argued the administration created a false narrative in which America’s only options were war or the nuclear deal, a dichotomy they said was misleading.
Michael Rubin, a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, said White House officials also inaccurately characterized Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a moderate politician upon his election in 2013.
Michael Doran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said Obama aides created a “pleasing story” with little basis in reality about moderates ascending to power alongside Rouhani in Iran.
Doran said the administration attempted to draw “moral equivalence” between critics of the nuclear deal and hardliners in Iran who opposed Rouhani.
Rhodes’ refusal to testify before the committee Tuesday ruffled Republican feathers.
Rhodes came under fire after a May 5 story in the New York Times exposed some of the aide’s aggressive messaging tactics. Those included providing fictitious talking points to think tanks who then fed the talking points as facts to reporters, creating what he called an “echo chamber” in favor of the Iran Deal.
Rep. Trey Gowdy blasted Rhodes for citing executive privilege in order to avoid testifying while speaking freely to reporters.
The South Carolina Republican also hit Rhodes for his educational background in creative writing, which was explored in the Times piece that dragged the White House aide into the spotlight.
“If you’re interested in writing haikus and sonnets, he’s probably the right guy,” Gowdy said of Rhodes.
The hearing came as Republican senators pressed President Obama to remove Rhodes for his “astonishing level of disrespect towards the U.S. Congress.”
Democrats on the Oversight Committee, however, argued the administration did not misrepresent the nuclear agreement with Iran when pitching it to Congress and lauded the deal as a vital step toward peace in the Middle East.
