RICHARD BAEHR: FAKE PRO-ISRAEL DEMOCRATS
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=13581
One by one, U.S. Senate Democrats are announcing that after much deliberation (translated as arm twisting by President Barack Obama), they have decided to support the Iran deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, despite serious misgivings. Each of the senators wants you to know that they were personally wrestling with this decision for weeks, talking to experts (provided by the Obama administration for the most part), reading the agreement carefully, weighing and balancing risk versus reward. Each Senate Democrat joining the charade of moving from indecision to decision, whether Claire McCaskill of Missouri or Kirsten Gillibrand of New York or Harry Reid of Nevada, makes sure to add that they want to do everything to protect our ally Israel, and will support other steps as necessary to remain vigilant on that front. Some of the deal supporters call for more military aid in the future for Israel, others for selling bunker buster bombs to Israel in case Iran violates the agreement in obvious ways that even the Obama administration can not hide.
Reid, allegedly undecided until the weekend, now says he will lobby other senators to support the deal. It sounds like he moved from 50-50 to all in and a strong backer overnight. A skeptic might think that the only thing that was ever really undecided about Harry Reid on this matter was when he would announce his vote to provide the most benefit to the administration. This would fit the pattern of prior announced votes. Gillibrand announced her vote on the same day the administration leaked that her fellow New York Senator Chuck Schumer would vote no. The administration released the news about Schumer during the first Republican presidential debate, as good a way as any to soften any damage the Schumer announcement would have on the eventual vote, given the large viewing audience for that spectacle. Schumer was then threatened publicly by the administration (through press secretary Josh Earnest) as possibly now being vulnerable in his quest for the top Senate Democrat position after the 2016 elections, forcing him to take to the phones and call other Senate Democrats. These calls were not to persuade the senators to vote against the deal, but to let any wavering Senate Democrats know they were free to vote however they chose and certainly Schumer would apply no pressure on them. Most important for Schumer was that this announcement to other senators of no pressure from him and no lobbying effort on his part, would help to shore up support for his ascension to majority leader or minority leader in early 2017, after Harry Reid leaves the Senate.
A similar pattern was followed this week, when New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, a regular target of the administration for some time due to his firmness on Iran sanctions, spoke forcefully at Seton Hall University about why he would vote no on the JCPOA, providing a blueprint for any truly wavering Democrat on why this deal was an easy one to reject.
The next two days, two “red-state” Democrats — Joe Donnelly of Indiana and McCaskill of Missouri, both announced they would support the agreement. One wonders what new information came to light to get these announcements when they were made. Both Donnelly and McCaskill are accidental senators whose most recent election was due entirely to extreme statements on abortion and rape by their opponents (Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin) during the 2012 campaign, that made them unacceptable candidates even in states with strong pro-life majorities among voters. Donnelly and McCaskill, because of their electoral vulnerability in their next election (an off year generally favoring Republicans in 2018) were considered to be among the group of senators who would be most likely to oppose the Iran deal, especially with public opinion running so strongly against the agreement (now by 2 to 1 margins). Their announcements were clearly designed to halt any anti-deal momentum resulting from the Menendez announcement.
Given that Obama has almost nothing to fear in terms of losing an override vote, the real maneuvering going on now, is a major effort by the administration to prevent 60 members of the Senate from announcing their opposition. Reaching the level of 60 insures that the Senate will get to vote on the JCPOA (achieving what is known as cloture) and then reject it, forcing a presidential veto. In the House, only a majority vote is needed for passage of the resolution to reject the deal, and opponents are already at about 60% of the members in opposition. In essence, the president wants to avoid the embarrassment of a 60% or better bipartisan majority in Congress rejecting his prized foreign policy achievement and forcing him to veto their resolution rejecting the deal. Since the votes are not there to reach the 2/3 override, the president now wants a complete victory over the opposition — no recorded vote in the Senate, no joint resolution to veto.
The JCPOA was never brought to the Senate as a treaty, for the practical reason according to Secretary of State Kerry that it could not get anywhere close to the 2/3 affirmative vote needed to pass. Instead the Corker-Menendez bill allowed the president to protect his legacy deal with 1/3 of members plus 1 in either House of Congress, a pretty low bar given that Democrats are 46% of the Senate, and 43% of House members.
The steady release of supposedly undecided senators to become deal proponents has left the no vote side stalled at 56- all 54 Republicans plus Menendez and Schumer. An odds-maker would today assess the chances of getting to 60 no votes at less than 50%.
What makes the string of announcements in favor of the deal so remarkable at this point, coming from both senators and House members, such as Jerry Nadler, who has the largest Jewish population in his district of any member of Congress, is that the members are simply ignoring the string of almost daily announcements that should have made them much greater skeptics of the agreement. Even The New York Times, which often seems to be serving as a second press secretary for the administration, explored the highly unusual arrangement of the secret protocol between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Iranians, which allowed the Iranians to self-inspect the Parchin facility, where it is highly likely that Iran conducted tests relevant to the detonation of nuclear warheads. But this was hardly the only revelation that has come to light in the past few weeks since the deal was signed in mid-July, which makes trust in Iranian performance under the terms of the agreement, a fool’s bet. David Gerstman has laid out a series of new problems for the White House, assuming Democrats in the House and Senate were paying attention or were interested. These include:
1. Syria’s secret chemical weapons stockpile
2. The visit to Russia by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Maj. Gen. Ghasem Soleimani
3. Iran’s announcement that it will test ballistic missiles
4. Russia announcing that it will complete the sale and delivery of advanced S-300 ground to air missile systems to Iran
5. The role of Iran in collecting evidence of its suspicious activities and reporting them to the IAEA (hold the laughter on this one).
Kerry has dismissed the significance of the final point by claiming that we know what we need to know about Iran’s prior weapons development. But one thing that real inspections of Parchin might reveal is the degree of past cooperation between Iran and North Korea on weaponizing Iran’s nuclear program.
The president has also come in for criticism for overstating the case for the agreement as if it were a no-brainer, and for his demonization of opponents — Republicans, rich Jews, and warmongers, making common cause with Iranian death-to-America chanters. If Democrats wanted to consider the various reasons why a no vote might be the correct one, they could watch the Israel Project’s Omri Ceren lay them out on C-Span.
Or they could read Menendez’s carefully written argument. At this point, Ceren is probably more familiar with the fine details of the agreement than any administration defender, and knows the complete history of the concessions made at the end of each negotiating period, including the final one, to make sure Iran got what it needed to sign. There was never any real possibility of the Americans walking away to reject a bad deal (any signed deal was a good deal for Obama and Kerry), just as an American military option was never on the table with this team. The Iranians knew Kerry would never walk away, and that Obama would never use force against them. Is it any wonder that the deal moved their way in every area?
Finally, there is the lip service the administration and its flacks in the House and Senate offer to make nice to Israel. Somehow, the administration argues that it knows better than Israel what is best for that country. Presumably a legacy for Obama trumps the billions released to Iran that will be used in part to provide new and more powerful weapons for Israel’s enemies on its borders, and the near certainty that Iran’s fully preserved nuclear program will some day shortly become fully operational again for its intended use to produce nuclear bombs.
On the Iran deal, there is near universal opposition across Israel’s fractured political system. In the United States, large and small Jewish federations across the country, and nonpartisan groups such as the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League have come out against the deal. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, historically bipartisan in its efforts, and almost always reluctant to challenge the executive branch directly, is working to get the deal voted down. Yes, there are Jews who back the deal — including groups who are anti-Zionist, such as a collection of far left-wing rabbis and J Streeters who never find anything to like about Israel, supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and George Soros. And they have made common cause with the likes of Moveon.org, Code Pink, the Daily Kos and other charming Israel haters. And sadly, there are Jewish Democrats in Congress for whom loyalty to the White House, at least when the president is from their party, means more than any real strategic calculations. Every Jewish Democrat who supports the deal, and every member such as Gillibrand who comes from a heavily Jewish state and signs on, makes it easier for many other Democrats to also stick to the party line.
Support for Israel used to be one of the few things on which Democrats and Republicans agreed. The Democrats lining up with Obama and Iran to support the JCPOA show that today, that support is a mile wide and an inch thick on anything that actually matters.
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