“If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act?” So asked President-elect Donald Trump last Thursday morning. The question, asked also by many of Trump’s Democratic adversaries, is a good one. If, as recent news reports indicate, the Obama administration knew all along that Russia was involved in hacking and releasing private Democratic communications in order to affect the recent U.S. election, why didn’t the administration do something to make them stop? The answer, writes Noah Rothman, has everything to do with President Obama’s desire to protect his legacy, a legacy “bound up in the Iran nuclear deal.”
The hacking of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s server occurred in March 2016. Three months later, in June, the DNC was targeted by hackers with what private security firms confirmed at the time were links to the Russian government. By July, when the documents recovered from those hacks were released by WikiLeaks, Democrats and the press were celebrating the success of the Iran nuclear deal on its first birthday.
Without Moscow’s cooperation [in maintaining that deal], there would have been no supposed triumph to celebrate.
By July, Russia was working with Iran on practical matters related to Tehran’s end of the bargain. Moscow was helping to convert the hardened, underground enrichment facility at Fordow into a production facility for medical isotopes and preparing to receive Iranian shipments of low-enriched uranium. The White House also feared in July that congressional Republicans could make life difficult for the White House by blocking the Energy Department from purchasing Iranian heavy water, thereby forcing Iran to offer the profitable opportunity to Moscow. . . .
The White House, in other words, was afraid that publicly confronting Russia over election hacking would lead to Russian withdrawal from their involvement in the nuclear deal. Rothman concludes:
Democrats are right to be incensed over Russia’s brazen intervention in American politics. [But] their anger is, in part, directionless because their partisan instincts require them to misdirect their ire. The Obama administration’s misguided efforts to reshape the strategic balance in the Middle East is responsible for [Russia’s] current undeserved status as geopolitical kingmaker.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/politics-ideas/mad-democrats-blame-iran-deal/