Taking sides in US Congress’ vote on Iran

Republican front-runner in the race for the party’s nomination for the presidency Donald Trump has trumped his competitors by saying that, if elected, he would not “rip up” the deal with Iran on its nuclear programme but “police that contract so tough they don’t have a chance” to violate it.

This distances Trump also from Republican movers and shakers who have been following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin’s Netanyahu’s policy of trying to scupper the nuclear deal.

Trump also accused President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry of selling out Israel by negotiating with Iran. He said that if elected president, he would take “very forceful action” to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power by suborning Congress.

Not immune to Israel’s political charms, Trump expressed concern about the $150 billion he said Iran would receive in frozen assets in exchange for reducing its nuclear programme and placing its nuclear facilities under strict monitoring.

He exaggerated about the amount of money Iran expects to collect. Some put it at $100 billion; Tehran has recently said it is $29 billion. 

Then Trump contradicted himself by saying that the $150 billion would enable Iran to gain nuclear weapons and “take over parts of the world… I think it’s going to lead to nuclear holocaust”, a word that always attracts the attention of Israeli and its supporters.

As with most of the Republican hopefuls, Trump’s reasoning is not logical but opportunistic. This goes for lawmakers from Obama’s own Democratic party as well as for Republicans.

Veteran New York Senator Chuck Schumer was the first to say he would oppose the deal as well as Obama’s use of the veto if the Senate tries to vote down the agreement.

Number three in the Democratic hierarchy, Schumer is a Jewish lawmaker who has consistently adopted strongly pro-Israel stands. He was expected to succeed retiring Harry Reid as the Democrat leader in the Senate, but by going against the president he could be sidelined.

Schumer has repeatedly angered Obama by opposing key policies, notably his health plan and regulation of Wall Street banks. Indeed, Schumer is known as the senator from Wall Street because he rejected financial restraints in spite of the global economic meltdown which began with banks in 2008.

Since Schumer supported the Bush administration’s disastrous war with Iraq, he has aligned himself with the neoconservatives who advocated — and still support — remaking the geo-political arrangements in this region to favour rulers who are prepared to submit to Israel’s diktat. 

Other “usual suspects” among Democrats also oppose the nuclear deal, including New York Congressmen Eliot Engel, his party’s senior member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, and Steve Israel. New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez has also joined the nay-sayers; he has been a proponent of imposing tough sanctions on Iran.

Obama said that “many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal.”

Republicans need at least 13 Democrats in the Senate and 44 in the House to secure the two-third majorities in both Houses to override Obama’s veto. Democratic legislators from both Senate and House are under massive pressure from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the official Israeli lobby organisation in the US, to toe Netanyahu’s line. 

Sixty AIPAC activists visited Schumer in spite of his long-standing loyalty to Israel.  AIPAC is said to be spending $20 million to persuade Democratic legislators to vote against the agreement while AIPAC-offshoot, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, has a budget of $25 million to buy advertising opposing the agreement.

The most important thing to remember about AIPAC and its affiliates is that they have long been in the Likud camp. At the end of the 19th century, Theodor Herzl, Israel’s founding father, advised the Zionist movement to “capture the communities”, meaning winning the backing of Jewish communities across the world.

The Likud took this advice to heart and has done its best to “capture” key Jewish organisations in influential countries, AIPAC being at the top of the list.

Since its founding in 1951, AIPAC has been dominated by powerful Jewish businessmen, mostly Republicans. While AIPAC formally proclaims fealty to the “two-state solution” of the Palestine-Israel conflict, many speakers at its gatherings oppose such an agreement, adopting the line taken by Netanyahu.

AIPAC’s grip on Congress is “institutionalised”, to quote a comprehensive article on the lobby by Connie Bruck, published in The New Yorker on September 1, 2014.

AIPAC officials inform key congressmen and women about the measures the organisation wants adopted and expects results. Schumer, Engel and other US lawmakers heed AIPAC’s commands both because of its stands and of its connections with the moneymen who finance political campaigns.

AIPAC is campaigning openly against the nuclear deal with Iran, which, the organisation claims, fails to “eliminate every Iranian pathway to a nuclear weapon”. 

Its website is packed with material explaining why the deal must be rejected by Congress and US citizens.

AIPAC cites a Quinnipiac University poll which found early this month that 57 per cent of US voters oppose and only 28 per cent favour the agreement “with only lukewarm support from Democrats and overwhelming opposition [from] Republicans and independent voters.

Other interesting findings of this survey show that 53 per cent of voters disapprove of Obama’s performance as compared to a 43 per cent approval rating; 75 per cent disapprove and 17 per cent approve of the job congressional Republicans are doing and 63 per cent disapprove and 29 per cent approve of the job Democrats are doing.

Quinnipiac is a private university based in Connecticut.

A second university poll of New York City voters, released on August 11, showed that those polled agreed with Schumer in his opposition to the deal, with 43 per cent against and 36 in favour. 

Manhattan voters backed the accord, 48-27 per cent, while voters in the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn were against to varying degrees.

A July poll conducted by the pro-Israel Wall Street Journal and the US National Broadcasting Company showed that 35 per cent support and 33 per cent oppose the deal, with don’t know voters at 32 per cent.

Democrats were more supportive, with 58 per cent in favour and 8 per cent opposed; among Republicans, 60 per cent opposed and 15 per cent supported.

It is important to note that positions have changed since April when 59 per cent of US voters supported the deal and 31 per cent rejected it. 

The rejectionists have been working hard in the media to change minds. 

This is clearly worrying the White House, pro-deal Democrats and other backers of the accord.

The sides are lining up ahead of next month’s votes in Congress. In an effort to counter AIPAC’s claim to embody the views of US Jews, 340 rabbis sent a letter to Congress on Monday in which they rejected the idea that the Jewish leadership and most American Jews oppose the agreement.

“We along with many other Jewish leaders, fully support this historic nuclear accord,” they stated.