Obama, Jewish leaders exchange Iran deal concerns
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and pro-Israel Jewish leaders exchanged concerns about how each side distorts the other’s arguments in the debate over the Iran nuclear deal, and how the distortions are creating divisions in the Jewish community.
The meeting, held at the White House on Tuesday evening, lasted more than two hours.
Participants said it was civil and friendly — Obama got a round of “happy birthdays” when he walked in the room — but that Obama forcefully expressed his frustrations with how the deal has been presented in the Jewish community. In contrast with previous meetings, they said, much of the discussion focused on the effect the debate was having on American Jews, as opposed to the details of the agreement.
Pro-Israel officials confronted Obama about the impression they said he leaves that his opponents are “warmongers” and about his suggestions that there is something untoward about their lobbying.
According to participants, Obama was especially frustrated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for not allowing activists who flew in last week to lobby the extended encounter he offered with his top officials. (AIPAC limited their presentation to 30 minutes).
Deal opponents and supporters are waging a battle for the hearts and minds of Democrats in Congress, who are the key to success or failure of a resolution of disapproval in a legislative window that closes toward the end of September. Democratic lawmakers are facing intensive lobbying and a barrage of ads from both sides. AIPAC is leading the effort to kill the deal.
“He asked people in the room, state your positions, argue them as you wish, but at least represent the facts objectively,” said Robert Wexler, a former congressman from Florida who now directs the Center for Middle East Progress. “Don’t misrepresent what the agreement provides.”
Five other people in the room, among them officials who favored and opposed the deal, related accounts similar to Wexler’s, who was the first Jew in Congress to endorse Obama’s presidential run in 2007. Wexler favors the deal. Four of those people asked not to be identified.
In the first 30 minutes of the meeting, Obama picked through the sanctions relief for nuclear restriction deal reached last month between Iran and six major powers and argued that it cut off Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon.
Obama displayed a familiarity with the arguments made by opponents of the deal. He has read the talking points memo AIPAC distributed to more than 600 activists who flew in last week, according to Greg Rosenbaum, the chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council. Rosenbaum was the only other participant other than Wexler to speak on the record.
Among the frustrations Obama expressed, Wexler said, was that some materials distributed by pro-Israel groups suggest sanctions relief will kick in right way, not after Iran has met the deal’s requirements to roll back uranium and plutonium enrichment. (It’s not clear if that was one of the AIPAC talking points.)
Wexler summed up Obama’s message as: “The debate is too important for the promotion of inaccuracies and misleading misrepresentations.”
Obama was especially frustrated that AIPAC allowed his top officials just 30 minutes to explain their side of the deal last week, in an encounter that included no questions from the audience.
AIPAC officials have said that the White House requested the meeting at the last minute with Denis McDonough, his chief of staff; Wendy Sherman, the top U.S. negotiator at the Iran talks, and Adam Szubin, Obama’s top sanctions enforcement official. More than 30 minutes would have impinged on lobbying appointments, the officials said.
Obama, who had directed his staff to ask AIPAC for the meeting, said he was ready to give AIPAC four hours after the activists finished their meetings.
The two AIPAC lay leaders at the Tuesday meeting at the White House were Michael Kassen and Lee Rosenberg, both past presidents. Obama expressed disappointment that some of the organizations attacking the plan were led by friends, an apparent reference to Rosenberg, who was a fundraiser for Obama.
An AIPAC spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.
Deal opponents at the meeting complained that they had been depicted as warmongers because Obama insists that the only alternative to his plan is war. Obama said that some of the plan’s critics favored war, but acknowledged that was not true of all of the opponents. Nonetheless, he said, he would continue to point out that the likely outcome of the plan’s failure would be war.
The deal critics also criticized Obama for saying in a conference call with liberal groups last week that his opponents were funded by billionaires. Obama noted that an AIPAC affiliate was ready to spend between $20 and $40 million to kill the deal, and he saw nothing wrong with pointing that out to his followers.
Much of the conversation focused on the split the deal is generating in the Jewish community, which Obama said concerned him, said Rosenbaum, whose Jewish Democratic group backs the Iran deal.
According to Rosenbaum, the president said that “he felt that if we continue to make this personal and substitute attacks for the deal pro or con, we weaken the Jewish community and the long-term U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Another participant said Obama acknowledged anxieties among some pro-Israel leaders about making public profound differences with Israel, but said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s adamant opposition to the deal left him little choice.
Among the other groups represented were J Street and Ameinu, liberal Middle East policy groups that back the deal, and representatives of an array of groups that have yet to decide, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and representatives of the Reform and Conservative movements. The Orthodox Union, which opposes the deal, was also represented, as was the World Jewish Congress, which has been strongly skeptical of the deal. There were regional leaders at the meeting as well.
JTA Wire Service
comments