Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/tag/iran/page/2/)
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is coming here to popularize the idea that the U.S. should essentially make impossible Obama’s efforts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, hence putting the U.S. and Israel on path toward war with Iran. We are taking a full-page ad in the NY Times, if we get enough people to donate to make it happen.
The Obama administration has begun to limit the information it shares with Israel regarding America’s ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran. The reason? White House officials fear that Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, may leak details both for his own political gain and to railroad delicate talks.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said yesterday that he will be speaking for “the entire Jewish people” in his controversial speech before Congress on March 3, anointing himself as leader and representative of all Jews – including the majority of American Jews who oppose his politics on Iran.
As the leader of Israel, Netanyahu often claims to speak for all Jews, absurdly conflating his political ideals with those of American Jewry. But he does not speak for most of us. Indeed, there are over three million American Jews for whom he does not speak.
The neocons are back, although not by popular demand. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a nauseating profile of Robert Kagan, one of the Flying Wallenda, I mean Kagan, war tribe consisting of Robert, father Donald, and brother Frederick. Tough guys all! The justification for the article is that the Kagans have come out of hiding because their Iraq policy has proven a success. Their thinking goes like this:
Yes, we helped steamroll the US into invading Iraq and we were right.
AIPAC’s annual conference that begins Sunday night promises to be less interesting than any in recent memory. That is because the main event took place months ago. Think about it. What is an AIPAC conference about? It is about power, specifically the lobby’s power to defend the Israeli government against United States policies it opposes.
Suddenly AIPAC is a lobby without a cause. In three weeks thousands of delegates from all over the country will descend on the Washington, D.C. convention center to get their marching orders but, as of today, AIPAC hasn’t even drafted them. That is because the centerpiece of the conference was to be dispatching its people to Capitol Hill to lobby for AIPAC’s Iran sanctions bill. The lobby had anticipated that its bill would still be very much alive in March. In fact, it would be at that sweet spot, with hundreds of co-sponsors but not quite enough to pass over President Obama’s veto.
It didn’t take much. Just the power of the presidency, the State Of The Union, and the whole country watching. Plus the president’s will. And AIPAC’s entire campaign to destroy America’s chance to reach an agreement with Iran crumbled. Within hours, three senators announced they were no longer cosponsoring AIPAC’s bill to kill the Iran negotiations (Gillibrand, Coons and Manchin), and AIPAC’s hopes to override Obama’s veto ended with a whimper, AIPAC’s whimper.
No, this does not mean that AIPAC and Netanyahu are giving up.
There can be little doubt that Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 nomination for president because she voted to authorize the Iraq war. If she had opposed it, there would have been no rationale for the Obama candidacy. It is likely that she, not President Obama, would now be in the White House. It seems crazy. But Clinton might see history repeat itself.
I received an email over the weekend from a woman in northern New Jersey who says she was “shocked” to see Senator Cory Booker’s name on the list of Democratic senators who are backing AIPAC over the president on the issue of Iran sanctions. “I don’t get it. He has been a friend of Muslims during his entire career. Why did he change?” The answer is simple: he didn’t.