Jewish Lobby Split as Iran Sanctions Lifted

The New Observer
January 19, 2016

The lifting of US sanctions against Iran—in acknowledgement that that country does not have a nuclear weapons program—is possibly the first major defeat for the right-wing Jewish lobby in America, but has done nothing to break the left-wing Jewish lobby’s grip on American politics.

Teheran, the capital of Iran.

The right-wing Jewish lobby’s primary representative is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Republican Party—controlled as it is by Likud Party supporting financiers like Sheldon Adelson.

Both AIPAC and the Adelson-type controllers are deeply tied into supporting the aggressive expansionist politics of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party in Israel.

AIPAC—and the right-wing Jewish lobby—firmly believe all the nonsense about Iranian “atom bombs” and regard anyone in the Arab world who dares to oppose the mass ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank as an “anti-Semite” and “hater of Jews.”

An AIPAC press release on the lifting of sanctions contained all the expected hysterical hyperbole over Iran’s long-proven-to-be-mythical “atom bomb,” along with a warning that this was now a “dangerous moment for America and our allies.”

AIPAC’s “allies” means of course Israel, and it is an example of this lobby’s chutzpah that it dares to position itself as “American” when it is nothing but a single-loyalty group devoted exclusively to Israel.

The AIPAC statement went on to say that the lifting of sanctions was a “turning point in Iran’s strength as a terrorist state and in its ability to pursue regional dominance”—a claim which is massively hypocritical in light of Israel’s behavior in the Middle East, which consists of terrorism against the Palestinians and “regional dominance.”

Furthermore, the deluded denizens of AIPAC claimed that the lifting of sanctions will see “Iran start down the path to legitimize its illicit nuclear program”—completely ignoring the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency specifically confirmed that there was no evidence that Iran had even contemplated a military nuclear weapon for well over twelve years.

The US Republican Party—now home to the right-wing US Jewish lobby—sprang into action to condemn the lifting of sanctions.

Senator Bob Corker, Republican Party chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoed the AIPAC position with a formal statement that “today cannot be the beginning of the United States and Europe turning a blind eye to the troubling threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.”

Demonstrating his utter ignorance and blind subservience to the right-wing Jewish lobby, Corker went on to mindlessly repeat the claim that Iran still had nuclear weapons: “Now armed with an initial windfall of more than $100 billion, [Iran] will have vast new resources to continue sponsoring terrorism, threatening its neighbors, and funding its nuclear and missile programs,” he said.

Would-be presidential candidate and Florida Senator Marco Rubio issued a statement condemning the lifting of sanctions, saying that it would “bolster the rule of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and foment the growth of the Islamic State terrorist group.”

This Republican halfwit is merely repeating the Jewish lobby’s lies: in fact, Iran has troops on the ground in Syria fighting against ISIS, correctly viewing that organization as a deadly threat to the Iranian state.

Rubio also vowed to “undo” the deal and “restore the sanctions” if elected. It is a searing indictment on American politics that Rubio is even a senator, never mind a potential presidential candidate, and proof that crushing stupidity is no bar in democratic politics.

The only Republican Party Presidential contender who has said he would not rescind the accord is, not surprisingly, Donald Trump. Even though Trump is fanatically pro-Israel, his sudden launch into politics has meant that he has largely made up his political positions along the way, mostly using simple logic to formulate policy positions.

Thus, while he was originally happy to take part in “oppose the nuclear deal” protests, Trump has developed new policies as he became familiar with the facts, and as early as August last year, he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would not reject the Iran nuclear deal, and would strictly enforce it.

Trump had already lost the support of the right-wing Jewish lobby with his earlier remarks on Iraq and Syria, and he knows it—hence his independent position on the Iranian deal.

His most outspoken criticism of it was made at a Tea Party rally in September 2015, when he said that it had been poorly negotiated. Unlike a fellow speaker at the rally, another would-be Republican Party presidential candidate Ted Cruz, Trump refused even then to condemn the deal.

The left-wing Jewish lobby, which is supported by the majority of American Jews and tends to follow the Israeli Labor Party version of Zionism, has on the other hand, welcomed the Iranian “nuclear deal.”

JStreet, the largest “liberal Zionist” Jewish lobby, said in a statement that they “welcome [the] announcement of the official implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program. Like the majority of American Jews, JStreet supports the JCPOA, which blocks all of Iran’s paths to developing a nuclear weapon. Our activists worked tirelessly last summer to help successfully shepherd the agreement through Congressional review.”

Significantly—because it accurately represents how this left-wing Jewish lobby views the situation—the JStreet statement adds that “For the first time in nearly a decade, Iran does not have the nuclear material needed to build even a single bomb. That makes Americans, Israelis, and the Iranian people themselves immeasurably safer.”

Though this statement repeats the long-disproven lie that Iran even had the ability to build an “atom bomb” within the last decade, it nonetheless shows that even the left-wing Jewish lobby is still motivated by what is in Israel’s interests—as one would expect them to be.

As the New Observer pointed out in an earlier article, the only real divergence between the “right-wing” and “left-wing” Jewish lobbies is the question of which political stance is in the best interests of international Jewry: to adopt a hardline “all-out-suppression-of-the-Palestinians-no-matter-what-the-world-says” policy, or to present the Zionist state in a more public relations savvy “friendly” light.

There is no intention on the part of “left-” or “right-” wing Jews to change any of the underlying issues which have created so much conflict: namely the Jewish lobby’s effective control of the political process in the US, and the fact that the state of Israel was founded on land violently and bloodily stolen from the Palestinians.