Bloomberg View: Obama Plays Politics of Fear to Get His Iran Deal
Tablet Magazine: With Iran Deal Under Review, the Obama Administration Tries to Bait Three Jewish Senators
We are now either in the 9th or extra innings in the long, drawn-out, increasingly bizarre and mendacious fight over the global powers agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program. Depending on which poll you look at, Americans either support the deal, are flatly opposed to the deal or have mixed opinions. It’s probably fairest to say that we don’t really know or there may in fact be no answer since it is an issue that very few people actually know the details about. So it matters greatly how you ask the question. In general, if you ask with the catch phrase, you get a negative answer. If you provide a bare explanation of what the deal includes, you get a supportive answer.
But all this is efforts to get at reality. Let’s move on to the spin.
Because of opposition to President Obama and deep-seated and independent ideological motivations, Congressional Republicans almost universally oppose the deal. But President Obama doesn’t need to win a vote. He needs to be able to sustain a veto of an adverse vote. He needs only a third of the Congress to support him. Indeed, only one third of one house. That in the nature of things has focused attention on a handful – maybe a handful-plus – of Jewish Democrats in Congress who are generally liberal but tend to be more hawkish on Israel. That’s what’s behind the Lee Smith’s imbecilic headline above about the White House allegedly “Jew-baiting” Sens. Schumer, Blumenthal and Cardin. A close runner up is the Bloomberg News claim that Obama playing the politics of fear by having the effrontery to note that the biggest opponents of the deal are the neoconservatives who saddled the country with the Iraq War. The gods of irony will not be mocked. But they are being mocked, with what consequences we cannot yet know.
The entire spectacle is a painful one within American Jewry. And there are many who say the deals opponents, particularly the arch-anti-dealnik, Benjamin Netanyahu, are happy to tear American Jewry apart in what is likely (but not certainly) a hopeless effort to scuttle the deal.
AIPAC is mounting a massive lobbying campaign to derail the deal. Indeed, there are a host of interlocking groups opposing it. Taken together there is no doubt the numbers of dollars being spent hugely outnumbers anything being spent in the messaging war on its behalf – an effort which is largely limited to the pro-Israel, pro-Peace group J-Street. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu too is pulling out all the stops to try to upend the President’s deal. Just yesterday – somewhat under the national media radar – Netanyahu arranged a live webcast, under the auspices of the Jewish Federations of North, piped directly to synagogues and other community centers to denounce the deal and its supporters for dishonestly stifling the voices of opponents like himself and suggesting that American Jews had similarly sat idly by when European Jewry stood on the precipice of destruction seventy-plus years ago.
What is ironic in all this is that while there’s good evidence that the majority of Americans oppose the deal – even if based on general ignorance about its terms – the majority of Jews clearly support it. This has created a painful situation for the various Jewish federations and community organizations who generally try to avoid taking stands on issues that polarize their communities but have found it difficult to avoid getting sucked into the controversy – especially in the face of right-wing funders who have threatened to withdraw funding if they don’t come out in opposition to the deal. This is a particular vexed issue since Jewish community organizations and the top national organizations rely on benefactors whose politics are far more right wing than the mass of American Jews.
Call it the Adelsonization of American Jewry.
Within Israel itself there has been a steady back beat of anxiety over the consequences of Prime Minister Netanyahu so openly working to scuttle the deal within the US government, particularly within Congress – this despite the fact that the deal itself is undoubtedly quite unpopular within Israel. Former Prime Minister (and more recently Netanyahu Defense Minister) Ehud Barak openly questioned the wisdom of not simply stating his country’s opposition to the deal on a state to state basis but trying to politic within the US government to undermine the president’s signature initiative, warning that such an effort to be disastrous for Israel and American Jews. Barak opposes the deal. But also says Israel can live not only with the deal but also with a nuclear Iran.
One of the most interesting perspectives on this intra-familial and international mess is that of Ari Shavit. Shavit writes for the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz and is generally part of the center-left. But he is extremely critical of the Iran deal. Indeed, he goes beyond critical to entertain the sort of wild hyperbole that often makes it hard to have a conversation on this topic. From his latest article, this is Shavit’s take on the consequences of the deal …
In the long term Iran will become a nuclear power, with dozens of nuclear bombs, intercontinental missiles and the ability to generate mass destruction. If no Persian Spring occurs to liberate the Iranians and the world from the Ayatollahs’ rule, a terrifying power will rise from the east, combining totalitarian ideology with the ultimate weapon. This aggressive, ambitious power will cast a giant shadow on Israel, subjugate large parts of the crumbling Arab world and turn the United States into a super-power of the past.
As you can see, the paragraph degenerates from the plausible to the possible to the simply unhinged in three short sentences. The last sentence echoes Netanyahu’s hyperbolic claim that Iran is plotting to take over the world. Who knows what people think or what or desire? What is significant is what they can do. There’s a guy on the street corner down from my apartment who wants to be the dictator of America. Considering his current status as a schizophrenic homeless man, I’m putting this low on my list of concerns. Iran is a more daunting player. But not in our or our children’s or our grandchildren’s lifetimes and likely never will it take over the world. Similarly, Iran would be a more challenging security threat with a nuclear arsenal. But let’s be honest: the Iranians are on the verge of perfecting a technology the US mastered seventy years ago. They are not in the vanguard of nuclear science.
With all that said, however, (and Shavit says much more) he actually says that if Netanyahu were to beat President Obama on his own turf, manage to scuttle the deal Obama has worked years bringing to fruition it would be a catastrophe for Israel. Here’s the next part of his column …
You don’t have to be a prophet to understand the implications of an Israeli triumph over the American administration regarding the Iranian issue. If in September Washington feels that Benjamin Netanyahu forced Barack Obama’s hand in what is clearly an American issue of national-security – the consequences will be grave.
From that moment forth Israel will become the “owner” of the Iranian file. Since no angels, only demons, will emerge from this file, every single demon will be registered under Jerusalem’s name. If an international crisis develops in which the United States is isolated – it will be Israel’s fault. If heaven forbid a war breaks out – it will be Israel’s fault. If the first Afro-American president is humiliated – it will be Israel’s fault.
So, alongside the threat developing in the East, a new threat will loom in the West. An anti-Semitic wave could wash over North America, endanger the Jewish community and weaken Israel considerably. The case of the reactor in Iraq and the reactor in Syria and the case of the settlements are even close to Iran. The past crises that Israel and the United States have undergone will be like nothing compared to the crisis that could happen, if Israel is seen as the one that set fire to the current American president’s international heritage.
Beyond all the fighting words, there’s a salient point, which is behind the Israeli security establishment’s very different take on the Iran deal than almost everyone in the political realm. A nuclear Iran is a bad thing for Israel – how could it not be? But the deal at least pushes it back ten or fifteen years. And as bad a deal as it may be, Israel can live with it. What it cannot live with is losing the unbreakable alliance with the US. As more than one commentator has said, Netanyahu, in typical vainglory, is placing himself like Samson with the US Capitol as his temple, crying out “Let me die with the Philistines or J Street, whoever seems appropriate to the moment.”
