When This Blows Over

Rhodes’s boss, President Obama, has been a strong and
consistent advocate for the agreement with Iran, which
requires the country to curtail its nuclear program —
notably its ability to produce fissile material that could be
used in nuclear bombs — in exchange for the lifting of
economic sanctions. He reinforced the misleading
administration timeline in announcing the agreement last
July. “Today, after two years of negotiations, the United
States, together with our international partners, has
achieved something that decades of animosity has not,” he
said then.
Rhodes’s freewheeling and cynical comments reminded
several White House and national security reporters of an
infamous 2010 story in Rolling Stone magazine in which
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in
Afghanistan, and aides mocked civilian government
officials, including Vice President Biden. McChrystal
apologized for the comments but later tendered his
resignation, which Obama accepted.
The Times article notes that Rhodes is a published shortstory
writer and aspiring novelist who is a skilled
“storyteller.”
“He is adept at constructing overarching plotlines with
heroes and villains, their conflicts supported by flurries of
carefully chosen adjectives, quotations and leaks from
named and unnamed senior officials,” Samuels wrote. “He
is the master shaper and retailer of Obama’s foreign-policy
narratives.”