Vice President Joseph Biden had an intimate phone call this week with about a thousand Jewish leaders, beseeching, teaching and preaching about the Iran nuclear deal.
Biden’s imploring hourlong call on July 20 typified how personal the campaign for — and against — the Iran nuclear deal is becoming.
President Barack Obama, speaking to veterans the next day, cast the deal as one that would save American troops from dying in a fruitless war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked the weekend American talk shows. So did John Kerry, the secretary of state who brokered the deal and who called one of Netanyahu’s signature criticisms “dumb.”
Since the deal was finalized on July 14, White House officials have blitzed the Jewish community with phone calls and pro-deal talking points.
In his July 21 speech in Pittsburgh to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Obama cast opponents of the deal as similar to backers of the Iraq war.
“In the debate over this deal, we’re hearing the echoes of some of the same policies and mindset that failed us in the past,” the president said. “Some of the same politicians and pundits that are so quick to reject the possibility of a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program are the same folks who were so quick to go to war in Iraq and said it would take a few months. And we know the consequences of that choice and what it cost us in blood and treasure.”
Meanwhile, AIPAC is pulling out all the stops in its battle to see the deal nullified. In a staff meeting last week, the group’s executive director, Howard Kohr, basically told his employees to cancel their vacations. Lay leaders, too, are canceling summer plans, and AIPAC activists are calling lawmakers and hitting synagogue listservs with appeals to can the plan.
The group plans to meet with lawmakers at their district offices during the summer break and bring activists to Washington, D.C., when Congress reconvenes in September. Congress has until mid-September to decide whether it will vote the deal down.
“We are undertaking a major and significant effort to urge Congress to oppose the deal and insist on a better agreement,” an AIPAC source told JTA.
Last week the influential pro-Israel lobby unveiled a political nonprofit, the Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, which it is backing in the “multimillions,” according to spokespeople.
Notably, the new group is being advised by five former Democratic lawmakers. Republicans already overwhelmingly oppose the deal, so the focus of groups like AIPAC is on Democrats who might join them. The Washington Post reported on July 21 that AIPAC spent $1.7 million in the first half of the year in its bid to rally opposition.
Also last week, Kohr distributed a phone script to the group’s activists to use in their meetings with members of Congress.
“I am calling to urge the senator/representative to oppose the Iran nuclear deal because it will not block Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” the script says.
J Street, the liberal Jewish political advocacy group, which largely has backed Obama in all his Middle East strategies, raised $2 million to stump for the deal even before it was announced and also unveiled a TV ad.
President Jeremy Ben Ami, who routinely bristles when J Street is likened to AIPAC, insisting that they play on different fields, is now embracing a fight with the older and larger lobby. Asked on MSNBC last week whether he was going “toe to toe” with AIPAC, he said, “Essentially we are.”
The Israeli government, meanwhile, is sending officials to Washington to campaign against the plan, starting with the opposition leader, Zionist Union’s Isaac Herzog — a bid to show the wide breadth of Israeli opposition to the plan.
Additionally, according to multiple sources, Netanyahu has made clear to his U.S. counterparts that he will reject all overtures to discuss additional U.S. defense assistance to offset any expansion of regional Iranian influence until he is certain all avenues to killing the deal are unavailable.
Caught in the middle are the 28 Jewish lawmakers in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Jewish lawmakers usually are AIPAC’s first avenue of access when they take on a major initiative. Yet the lawmakers, all but one of whom caucus with Democrats, also have been under pressure by the administration to back the deal.
On July 16, 15 of the 18 Jewish House members attended a meeting at the White House convened by Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. Some were uncharacteristically silent about how it went.
“Congressman Israel has said it was a very informative meeting,” the spokeswoman for Rep. Steve Israel of New York said after the meeting. Israel signs his statements the “highest ranking Jewish Democrat” in the House.
Rep. Brad Sherman of California, a Democratic hardliner on Iran who attended the meeting and has yet to decide how he will vote on the deal, said his impression is that the White House is successfully accruing support from Democrats in general and from Jewish Democrats in particular. Without substantial support from Democrats for killing the deal, there is no chance a veto override can happen.