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WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) -- U.S. House Republicans wants a top White House adviser to testify on Capitol Hill after comments he made about the administration's efforts to promote the Iran nuclear deal to the press. GOP leaders of the House Oversight Committee want Ben Rhodes to testify Tuesday at a hearing called, "White House narratives on the Iran Nuclear Deal," committee spokesman M.J. Henshaw told The Hill.
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Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, hasn't responded to the request.
Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, might issue a subpoena to demand he show up, an aide told The Hill.
In a statement, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said House Republicans were re-opening the fight over the accord. "The Iran deal was debated and scrutinized for months last year. Republicans had vowed to block it, could not muster the votes to do so, and are now seeking to relitigate that old political fight," Schultz said.
"But with all the serious issues stuck in Congress right now -- like preparing for [the Zika virus'] arrival, helping Puerto Rico through their financial crisis, providing assistance to the people of Flint, [Mich.], or combatting the opioid epidemic -- it is a shame that Chairman Chaffetz is choosing to take a page out of [former committee Chairman] Darrell Issa's playbook to distract from all the work they should be doing."
Schultz's statement did not specify whether Rhodes would testify next week.
In comments last week in The New York Times, Rhodes boasted of creating an "echo chamber" of experts and journalists to support the Iran nuclear deal.
The former fiction writer mentioned how the media can be manipulated because foreign bureaus have been curtailed and journalists are often reporting on foreign issues from Washington, D.C.
"All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus," Rhodes is quoted as saying. "Now they don't. ... 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."
He described talking points.
"In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this," he said. "We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked."
"We drove them crazy," he said of the deal's opponents.
Rhodes responded on Medium Sunday evening, he said the administration didn't attempt to mislead.
"[We] never made any secret of our interest in pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran," Rhodes wrote, noting that President Barack Obama had "campaigned on that position in 2008."
He also praised reporters, including those covering the administration.
"There was no shortage of good reporting and analysis -- positive, negative, and mixed -- about the Iran deal," he wrote.
The nuclear deal set limits on Iran's ability to build a nuclear bomb in exchange for lifting international sanctions.
