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The Iran Threat

Chaos at State as Echo Chamber Scrambles to React to White House’s Iran Revelations

There was a concerted effort to make it seem as if there was a “thaw” in American-Iranian relations following the election of Iranian ‘moderates’ in 2013. This was a blatant lie, as negotiations had begun long before.

BY Bruce Cornibe · | May 11, 2016

The fallout in Washington this week centered around White House National Security advisor Ben Rhodes, and his admission that he strategically duped a young, uneducated and partisan press corps so that the White House could sell a misconceived Iran nuclear deal. Writing at the Federalist, David Reaboi highlights one of the likely reasons the White House felt the need to deceive the American people on the Iranian deal because in 2008 (start of Obama era/President-elect Obama) 88% of Americans held an unfavorable opinion of Iran. Therefore, the White House needed to craft a “new narrative” on Iran.

Katie Pavlich of Townhall talks chronicles the duplicity and cunning behind Rhodes in attempts to manipulate reporters quoting from a New York Times article named, “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru.”

“All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” Rhodes said. “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.”

In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. “We created an echo chamber,” he admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

One of the tactics the White House used was lying about when talks started with Iran. For instance, in February of 2013, Victoria Nuland, then-State Department Spokesperson, rejected rumors of “direct, secret bilateral talks with Iran.” Even though Jen Psaki, Nuland’s successor, would contradict Nuland’s claim by admitting, as James Rosen of Fox reported, “the meetings stretched back to 2011.” James Rosen on Monday mentioned about how the interchange between him and Psaki went missing from the State Department, then the video bizarrely resurfaced on the State Department’s website the next morning. A little suspicious to say the least.

Reaboi also mentions about the White House’s fabrication of “overarching plotlines with heroes and villains.” For example, the concerted effort to make it seem as if there was a “thaw” in American-Iranian relations following the election of Iranian ‘moderates’ in 2013, which paved the way for negotiations of the Iran deal. Reaboi writes about this twist of reality:

One of the “overarching plotlines” Rhodes crafted credited Hassan Rouhani’s election in June with signaling a new willingness of Iranians to negotiate that the Obama administration then embraced. Obama, of course, would play the hero; the villains, however, numbered in the thousands, like the cast of “Ben Hur”: neocons, and those darkly loyal to Israel’s interests; partisan Republicans; knuckle-dragging warmongers, and other enemies of the peace.

Reaboi also discusses how the White House used “force multipliers” in order to intimidate critics of the Iran deal (not just reporters but government officials):

The White House’s “force multipliers” were put to work every time the American people got too close to the truth about the Iran deal. This was most in evidence while a few intrepid reporters at the Wall Street Journal or Associated Press broke revelations of numerous radical Obama administration giveaways, especially the Parchin side deal.

The White House has waged a propaganda campaign against the American public. We can expect more of the same from the Obama administration, spurred by the desire to leave a lasting legacy before Obama’s last year as president expires. It’s time to expose Ben Rhodes and his complicit colleagues before these lies continue.

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