Posted on 05/06/2016 7:35:01 AM PDT by Nachum
Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency. “It’s the center of the arc,” Rhodes explained to me two days after the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was implemented. He then checked off the ways in which the administration’s foreign-policy aims and priorities converged on Iran. “We don’t have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other ways to resolve these issues,” he said. “We can do things that challenge the conventional thinking that, you know, ‘AIPAC doesn’t like this,’ or ‘the Israeli government doesn’t like this,’ or ‘the gulf countries don’t like it.’ It’s the possibility of improved relations with adversaries. It’s nonproliferation. So all these threads that the president’s been spinning — and I mean that not in the press sense — for almost a decade, they kind of all converged around Iran.”In the narrative that Rhodes shaped, the “story” of the Iran deal began in 2013, when a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian regime led by Hassan Rouhani beat regime “hard-liners” in an election and then began to pursue a policy of “openness,” which included a newfound willingness to negotiate the dismantling of its illicit nuclear-weapons program. The president set out the timeline himself in his speech announcing the nuclear deal on July 14, 2015: “Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not.” While the president’s statement was technically accurate — there had in fact been two years of formal negotiations leading up to the signing of the J.C.P.O.A. — it was also actively misleading, because the most meaningful part of the negotiations with Iran had begun in mid-2012, many months before Rouhani and the “moderate” camp were chosen in an election among candidates handpicked by Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The idea that there was a new reality in Iran was politically useful to the Obama administration. By obtaining broad public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy choices that his administration was making. 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.
...
The person whom Kreikemeier credits with running the digital side of the campaign was Tanya Somanader, 31, the director of digital response for the White House Office of Digital Strategy, who became known in the war room and on Twitter as @TheIranDeal. Early on, Rhodes asked her to create a rapid-response account that fact-checked everything related to the Iran deal. “So, we developed a plan that was like: The Iran deal is literally going to be the tip of everything that we stand up online,” Somanader says. “And we’re going to map it onto what we know about the different audiences we’re dealing with: the public, pundits, experts, the right wing, Congress.” By applying 21st-century data and networking tools to the white-glove world of foreign affairs, the White House was able to track what United States senators and the people who worked for them, and influenced them, were seeing online — and make sure that no potential negative comment passed without a tweet.
...
When I suggested that all this dark metafictional play seemed a bit removed from rational debate over America’s future role in the world, Rhodes nodded. “In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this,” he said. “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. So we knew the tactics that worked.” He is proud of the way he sold the Iran deal. “We drove them crazy,” he said of the deal’s opponents.
Yet Rhodes bridled at the suggestion that there has been anything deceptive about the way that the agreement itself was sold. “Look, with Iran, in a weird way, these are state-to-state issues. They’re agreements between governments. Yes, I would prefer that it turns out that Rouhani and Zarif” — Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister — “are real reformers who are going to be steering this country into the direction that I believe it can go in, because their public is educated and, in some respects, pro-American. But we are not betting on that.”
In fact, Rhodes’s passion seems to derive not from any investment in the technical specifics of sanctions or centrifuge arrays, or any particular optimism about the future course of Iranian politics and society. Those are matters for the negotiators and area specialists. Rather, it derived from his own sense of the urgency of radically reorienting American policy in the Middle East in order to make the prospect of American involvement in the region’s future wars a lot less likely. When I asked whether the prospect of this same kind of far-reaching spin campaign being run by a different administration is something that scares him, he admitted that it does. “I mean, I’d prefer a sober, reasoned public debate, after which members of Congress reflect and take a vote,” he said, shrugging. “But that’s impossible.”
One of the few charter members of the Blob willing to speak on the record is Leon Panetta, who was Obama’s head of the C.I.A. and secretary of defense and also enough of a product of a different culture to give honest answers to what he understands to be questions of consequence. At his institute at the old Fort Ord in Seaside, Calif., where, in the days before he wore Mr. Rogers sweaters, he served as a young Army intelligence officer, I ask him about a crucial component of the administration’s public narrative on Iran: whether it was ever a salient feature of the C.I.A.’s analysis when he ran the agency that the Iranian regime was meaningfully divided between “hard-line” and “moderate” camps.“No,” Panetta answers. “There was not much question that the Quds Force and the supreme leader ran that country with a strong arm, and there was not much question that this kind of opposing view could somehow gain any traction.”
I ask Panetta whether, as head of the C.I.A., or later on, as secretary of defense, he ever saw the letters that Obama covertly sent to Khamenei, in 2009 and in 2012, which were only reported on by the press weeks later.
“No,” he answers, before saying he would “like to believe” that Tom Donilon, national security adviser since 2010, and Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, had a chance to work on the offer they presented.
As secretary of defense, he tells me, one of his most important jobs was keeping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, from launching a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They were both interested in the answer to the question, ‘Is the president serious?’ ” Panetta recalls. “And you know my view, talking with the president, was: If brought to the point where we had evidence that they’re developing an atomic weapon, I think the president is serious that he is not going to allow that to happen.”
Panetta stops.
“But would you make that same assessment now?” I ask him.
“Would I make that same assessment now?” he asks. “Probably not.”
Read the whole thing. You'll never trust another politician.
The list, Ping
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Lying Liars... 8 years worth.
Ben Rhodes, Liar: The man who creates the White House's own reality
Obama Adviser Quoted: ‘We Created an Echo Chamber’ to Sell the Iran Nuclear Deal
The Lord will round up all the scoundrels of history on His Day. They did the Devil’s work and will be paid his wages.
I read this and think they don’t think we knew the Obamanites were lying!? Of course we knew, but no bombs were dropping in our backyard so we went about our business waiting for our Congressional representatives to do their jobs.
Still waiting.
Forget the trial, we just need a bunch of lamp posts and rope.
I already don't trust any politician.
That's why I support Trump, warts and all.
Mossad will handle this.
“Am I correct is stating that every path leads to “destroying Israel”?”
Not so sure of that. Kind of reminds me of one of the Die Hard movies where the villian comments on the hero who seems about to die: “That’s a bonus”.
Don’t forget that Iran already had missiles that could reach Israel. What they are developing are long range missiles that can reach the U.S. IMHO, what we have in the M.E. is a witches brew of brazen weapons profiteering, pacifism, and the international communist movement finally being able to transport huge amounts of people to western countries to destroy the ‘nation-state’. Matt Bracken (fellow FReeper) is convinced we are on a collision course for war with Iran, repleat with EMP’s and Nukes. Hard to argue with his logic, but with the cowards in the White House, we would long surrender before that came to pass I think.
One may also add in the racist notions of the father of modern day white hatred Derrick Bell, who is the mentor of Obamatron.
http://www.nachumlist.com/derrickb.htm
Derrick Bell saw the U.S. as inherently evil and advocated the complete destruction of American society as the only way forward to reeducate the masses. So if you add in the calculus of Obama’s childhood of race-hatred for America it would account for his love of Derrick Bell and his fomenting race war at every turn.
So, no I do not think that all of the Iran dealing and lies is meant only for Israel, but in the eyes of the Jew-hating progressive-Socialist-Communist-Left... It’s a bonus.
“For the common good”
Very good! Thanks Nachum! It is possible that the US could go to war with Iran, however I am not sure I see the ground war scenario right now...given that our politicians are advocating for pulling out of the countries we are currently fighting in (Trump/Clinton). From a Biblical perspective, Ezekiel 38-39 mentions Iran will join a Russian led ground war against Israel and does not seem to be opposed by anyone. So perhaps the US tacitly approves of this.?.? This action does not go well for Russia, Iran, Turkey, or any of the nations. Note that the Ezekiel 38-39 coalition does not include the belligerent nations immediately around Israel. It is suspected by many students of the Bible that Psalms 83/Jeremiah 49 will occur just before Ezekiel 38
Matt Bracken (fellow FReeper) is convinced we are on a collision course for war with Iran, repleat with EMP’s and Nukes.
Except the exact opposite is happening and will continue to happen - the West is JOINING Islam.
1) LONDON! mayor Sadiq Khan.
2) The Pope (1.25+ billion Christians) ... loving and public support of Islam.
3) P5+1 countries and Iran "deal"
4) A muslim president and muslim CIA director
5) 911 happens and the popularity of Islam in America explodes.
6) Mass "immigration" of Muslims to the EU & US
7) Angela Merkel said Islam "belongs to Germany"
etc.
Anything COULD happen. What's important is what IS happening.
Read the whole thing. You'll never trust another politician.
Who among us ever trusted a politician?
We need set an examples in order to send the message to all who circumvent the laws and get away with it. Start with the little guys and work your way up to the top
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