The fact is that in CONGRESS, the deal was sold and explained primarily by John Kerry and Ernie Moniz. Nothing said by these two men was guided by Rhodes, who knew less than they did about the deal. The questions asked dealt with what was in the deal - not the history of getting it.
Not to mention, the NYT magazine article, written by a writer who in 2009 was in favor of bombing Iran, was ostensibly a puff piece on Rhodes, but was intended to re-litigate the Iran deal. As such, it's main contention was that the deal really was made before Rouhani took office. In fact, that is an incredible stretch. It builds on the truth that the US initiated contact in 2011 - 2012. Oddly, it is implicitly using HRC's attempt to take more credit than anyone else gives her. Part of that is taking credit for everything done by Jake Sullivan and William Burns - even though their success was NOT in 2011/2012, but in 2013 when they reported to Biden and Kerry respectively. Not to mention, that success was to get to a point where investing diplomatic effort was considered worthwhile. That led to the phone call between Obama and Rouhani.
Then (Fall 2013) the negotiation was in the open and Wendy Sherman was the negotiator, with Kerry leading it. Kerry and his peers - including Fabius of France had weeks of negotiations with Zarif to define the interim deal - so, no it was not basically all done in 2012.
Not to mention, this was just the interim deal and the writer is hoping that people will not know that the interim agreement was a small trust building agreement that - while future negotiations were going on - froze Iran's program for very minor reduction in sanctions. Not to mention, though many cheered that the interim deal was made as opposed to talks ending in failure, President Obama in many interviews still gave a less than 50% chance for a final deal. Jake Sullivan predictably said it was not as good as it should have been and HRC was rather ambivalent neither praising or faulting that early deal.
However, what the writer completely ignores is the more than a year of long hours, days, weeks, months of negotiation to get the framework and the final deal. This completely ignores the tremendous work of Moniz, who as a nuclear physicist led a US effort to design the monitoring regime that follows the entire process. It ignores the amount of time and effort spent by every one of the P5 plus 1 and the number of times the chances to get an agreement seemed dim.
What the author turns on its head are comments that Rhodes, among other things, used an argument that agreeing to the deal would help the moderates in Iran versus the hard liners to suggest he distorted the history of when the deal started. Given the election results it is very likely the argument was completely correct - and the fact that the first contacts were made before Rouhani does not make that argument less real.
In addition, arguing that the entire complex final deal was essentially agreed to in 2012 is nonsense. This NYT article has what is the best description of what was happening in 2012 - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/us/politics/for-hillary-clinton-and-john-kerry-divergent-paths-to-iran-nuclear-talks.html?_r=0 Not to mention, the author ignores that 2012 was an election year - not an auspicious time to move to make a deal that would have caused AIPAC to go ballistic.
= new reply since forum marked as read