In light of White House aide Ben Rhodes’ admission last Thursday that the public was misled on the controversial Iran nuclear deal, senior author and commentator Lt. Col. Ralph Peters on Monday quipped that brutal Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin “could have used this guy.”
Peters was speaking to Stuart Varney of Fox News about how Rhodes revealed to the New York Times his methods of using reporters and creating an “echo chamber” of groups supportive of US President Barack Obama to sell the nuclear deal.
Rhodes admitted that while the American public was led to believe that negotiations between the West and the Islamic Republic took off after the election of President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, who was touted as a “moderate,” in reality negotiations with hard-liners began much earlier.
In response to the scandal, Peters began by noting on Rhodes’ title as Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications.
“In other words, Chief Propagandist,” he explained. “And as a propagandist, he’s been very, very good. I mean, Joseph Stalin could have used this guy. But, really, if you look at what he said, he not only insulted journalists, just trashed them, he insulted the foreign policy community, the military, virtually everyone.”
“Ben Rhodes was gleeful, gleeful in this brilliantly done article about how they put one over on the American people through manipulating journalists through this myth that they were only negotiating now with the Iranians because suddenly there were moderates in place when they’d been negotiating with the hard-liners for years before that.”
“Then Ben Rhodes throws out the trope that, ‘Well, you know, if you don’t like this nuke deal, the only alternative is war.’ And that was nonsense,” he added, noting that senior commanders said there were other alternatives.
Peters also said Rhodes was “just a wordsmith” and a “marketer,” noting the irony given his statements in which he belittled the inexperienced journalists who were used to sell the deal.
