Samuels writes that the underlying intent of the Iran nuclear deal was to "create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and Turkey" and "effectively begin the process of a large-scale disengagement from the Middle East."

The problem with this assertion is that Rhodes never says any such thing. Nor do any of the other U.S. officials quoted in the story, or anyone else for that matter. And nowhere does the article assemble actual evidence to corroborate this provocative description of the Obama administration's grand strategy in the Middle East [bold mine-DL]. This proposition was first and most fully articulated by my former colleague Michael Doran, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, in a 2015 article for an obscure internet magazine that went viral. Its thesis clearly animates many of the deal's opponents. But absent evidence, the premise that Obama harbors a "secret plan" to jettison America's deep security partnership with Israel and the Gulf states constitutes pure conjecture, not fact.