Category Archives: Iran deal

AIPAC tells Congress: You can vote down Iran deal because Obama can implement it anyway

M.J. Rosenberg writes: Bob Satloff, an old AIPAC hand, who now runs AIPAC’s think-tank, the Washington Institute For Near East Policy (which AIPAC created as its “intellectual front” in 1985) has let us in on one of the most interesting arguments that AIPAC’s lobbyists are now using against the Iran deal on Capitol Hill.

It is that Senators and House members can safely vote down the agreement because President Obama can implement it unilaterally anyway. In other words, it’s a safe vote. You can please the lobby (i.e, the donors) without damaging U.S. foreign policy because your vote doesn’t change a thing. [Continue reading…]

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On the Iran deal, American Jewish ‘leaders’ don’t speak for most Jews

Todd Gitlin and Steven M. Cohen write: The conflict over the Iran deal has exposed a substantial rift between American Jews and the groups generally known as “the Jewish leadership,” “major Jewish organizations” and “influential Jewish organizations.” These leaders and groups are not, in fact, leading American Jewish opinion on the Iran deal. They are defying it. They doubtless represent the views of their board members, but those views are at odds with the majority of rank-and-file American Jews, who, in fact, support the deal more than Americans generally.

Many major Jewish organizations oppose the Iran deal. Among the most prominent are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. (The Conference of Presidents explicitly states that it “advances the interests of the American Jewish community.”) Those who support the claims of AIPAC and its allies that dominate the Conference of Presidents often do not pause to note that the largest American Jewish organization to support the Iran deal, J Street, was denied membership in the otherwise inclusive umbrella body last year.

One of us (Cohen) conducted a poll last month for the Jewish Journal on the Iran accord. This is the only poll of American Jews on the subject to explicitly include Jews with no religion — those who said that, “aside from religion,” they “consider themselves Jewish.” They were asked their opinion of “an agreement . . . in which the United States and other countries would lift major economic sanctions against Iran, in exchange for Iran restricting its nuclear program in a way that makes it harder for it to produce nuclear weapons.” Of the three-quarters who said they knew enough to offer an opinion on the deal, 63 percent supported it.

Simultaneously, the same polling agency asked the same questions of a sample of all Americans. Of those who said they knew enough, 54 percent supported the deal, while 46 percent opposed it. (Only 52 percent of this total sample said they knew enough.) [Continue reading…]

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Netanyahu’s strategy on Iran backfired

Paul Pillar writes: Those paying attention both to the Israeli government’s implacable opposition against the agreement restricting Iran’s nuclear program and to the issue of Iran’s other activity in the Middle East might take note of some background that several analysts, including Shibley Telhami and Aaron David Miller, have noted: that Israeli agitation about the Iranian nuclear program was a principal impetus for negotiating the agreement on that subject that was finalized in Vienna last month. Miller goes so far as to suggest (presumably with tongue firmly in cheek) that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ought to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his activism that motivated other governments to negotiate the deal that he now is doing his utmost to shoot down.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli official and current director of the Middle East program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, in an especially insightful article that explains positions on these issues both of Netanyahu’s government and of other Israeli political leaders, adds additional detail to this background. He notes that it was Israel’s government that had insisted at least as strongly as anyone that the nuclear file must be dealt with first and dealt with separately, without talking to the Iranians about regional issues or anything else.

That earlier Israeli position directly contradicts, of course, current complaints from Netanyahu’s government and other opponents of the agreement that the deal does not address non-nuclear issues of Iranian policy and behavior — things the agreement never was intended to address. But this contradiction is no more nonsensical than the overall set of Israeli government positions on the nuclear issue if those positions are taken at face value. The positions have included incessantly ringing an alarm bell about how Iran’s nuclear program could lead to a weapon and then trying to destroy the very measures designed to ensure that the program does not lead to a weapon. Things make sense, from the Israeli government’s point of view, only if they are not taken at face value. An objective of that government, rather than achieving a nuclear agreement, has been instead to avoid any agreements with Iran, on nuclear matters or anything else. A calculation that there could be plenty of agitation on the nuclear issue without any agreement emerging was by no means crazy. U.S.-Iranian diplomacy, after all, was virtually nonexistent as recently as three years ago. Serious questions were being raised elsewhere about whether, when U.S. and Iranian diplomats did sit down to talk, there would be enough bargaining space to reach an agreement on the nuclear question. And even if a deal started to emerge, the Israeli government still would have a traditional and trusty weapon — its political lobby in the United States — to shoot it down.

Meanwhile all that agitation about a nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapon served a purpose somewhat akin to the neocon agitation a decade earlier about the nonexistent Iraqi nuclear weapons: it helped to scare people to get them in line to achieve other objectives. Nuclear weapons are inherently scary and therefore useful for that sort of thing, even when they are nonexistent. In the case of Iraq the neocon objective was to get public support for launching an offensive war. In the case of Iran an Israeli objective is to get people to be deathly afraid of Iran and to view the Middle East the way Israel wants them to view it: as a region in which Iran is the source of instability and evil, in which Iran thus should only be shunned and never partnered, and in which Israel is the most reliable and effective partner for anyone who wants to be on the side of good against evil, and especially for the United States.

Now it appears that the calculation about being able to agitate without bringing about an agreement on the nuclear issue, though not crazy, was mistaken. [Continue reading…]

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What the Iran-deal debate is like in Iran

Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul write: The nuclear deal with Iran has sparked a vigorous debate not only in the United States, but in Iran as well. The discussion of the agreement among Iranians at times echoes the American discussion, but is also much deeper and wider. Reports in Iranian media, as well as our own correspondence and conversations with dozens of Iranians, both in the country and in exile, reveal a public dialogue that stretches beyond the details of the agreement to include the very future of Iran. And it seems that everyone from the supreme leader to the Iranian American executive in Silicon Valley, from the taxi driver in Isfahan to the dissident from Evin Prison, is engaged. The coalitions for and against the deal tend to correlate closely with those for and against internal political reform and normalized relations with the West.

The mere fact that there is such a debate says something about the nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran today. Iran is a dictatorship. One man, the supreme leader, has most of the power. He is the commander in chief and thus formally controls the military, the very powerful internal militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and its external wing, the Quds Force. The supreme leader appoints the head of the judiciary, the head of the Iranian national radio and television organization, and most of the National Security Council — an advisory body similar to the U.S. National Security Council. He also controls tens of billions of dollars in revenues from religious endowments and foundations. And, as stated in the constitution, he is the spiritual leader of the country, combining religious and political power in one office.

And yet nowadays the supreme leader does not decide everything on his own. Some formal institutions of the Iranian regime, and a myriad of informal interest-group networks, also play a role in shaping policy, including on the nuclear deal. Most importantly, the Iranian president has some political autonomy. Through his control of the Guardian Council — a committee of 12 men that among other things must approve every candidate wishing to run for elective office — the supreme leader decides who is allowed to run for president. But once the list of candidates is determined, the vote is usually competitive, giving the chief executive an electoral mandate directly from the people. In the last presidential election, candidates ideologically closest to the supreme leader garnered only a few million votes, while the one candidate running as a reformer, Hassan Rouhani, received more than 18 million votes. Rouhani’s wide margin of victory strengthened his position as a partially independent actor within the Iranian regime. [Continue reading…]

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Dozens of retired generals, admirals back Iran nuclear deal

The Washington Post reports: Three dozen retired generals and admirals released an open letter Tuesday supporting the Iran nuclear deal and urging Congress to do the same.

Calling the agreement “the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” the letter said that gaining international support for military action against Iran, should that ever become necessary, “would only be possible if we have first given the diplomatic path a chance.”

The release came as Secretary of State John F. Kerry said U.S. allies were “going to look at us and laugh” if the United States were to abandon the deal and then ask them to back a more aggressive posture against Iran. [Continue reading…]

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Head of group opposing Iran accord quits post, saying he backs deal

The New York Times reports: When the bipartisan advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran decided last week to mobilize opposition against the nuclear deal with Tehran, Gary Samore knew he could no longer serve as its president.

The reason: After long study, Mr. Samore, a former nuclear adviser to President Obama, had concluded that the accord was in the United States’ interest.

“I think President Obama’s strategy succeeded,” said Mr. Samore, who left his post on Monday. “He has created economic leverage and traded it away for Iranian nuclear concessions.”

As soon as Mr. Samore left, the group announced a new standard-bearer with a decidedly different message: Joseph I. Lieberman, the former senator from Connecticut and the new chairman of the group. [Continue reading…]

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Ordinary Iranians unafraid to criticize their own government

Larry Cohler-Esses (from The Forward), “the first journalist from a Jewish, pro-Israel (if not always pro-Israel government) publication to be granted a journalist’s visa since the 1979 Revolution,” writes: Ordinary Iranians with whom I spoke have no interest at all in attacking Israel; their concern is with their own sense of isolation and economic struggle. Official government statistics estimate the unemployment in Iran at around 10%. But unofficial sources estimate it as twice that — and this in a context in which only 36% of the population participates in the workforce. An estimated 150,000 Iranians with college educations leave the country yearly.

But among ordinary Iranians the sense that something is now opening up in the country is pervasive. It began with the election of the reformist presidential candidate Rouhani in 2012, long before the recently negotiated nuclear agreement introduced the prospect of crippling sanctions being lifted. And the impact of this mood on people’s willingness to speak out is clear.

In Iran today, freedom of the press remains a dream. But freedom of tongue has been set loose. I was repeatedly struck by the willingness of Iranians to offer sharp, even withering criticisms of their government on the record, sometimes even happy to be filmed doing so.

“The people of Iran want in some way to show the world that what’s going on in the last years is not the will of the Iranian people but of the Iranian government,” Nader Qaderi told me as I filmed him with my phone outside his butcher shop in North Tehran’s Tajrish Market. A small crowd looked on as we talked. “We have no hostility against Israel,” he stressed.

Asked about prospects for the international nuclear agreement, which is coming under angry fire in Iran no less than in the United States, Qaderi told me: “I think it will be implemented. But there will be no improvement for the Iranian people. Our main concern now is freedom! I think what we need most of all now is political intelligence. People have no clear idea of what they want. This is the real struggle.” [Continue reading…]

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Iran deal furor reveals a split among Jewish Americans

Lisa Goldman reports: The frenzied lobbying in Washington over the international deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program has drawn attention to two unprecedented ruptures — both of which potentially have significant long-term consequences for Israel’s place in U.S. domestic politics.

For decades, unconditional support for Israel had been a point of unshakable bipartisan consensus inside the Beltway, even as bipartisanship on most other issues became a distant memory. A majority of Jewish voters continue to choose the Democrats; deep-pocketed Jewish donors remain vital to the electoral prospects of candidates from both parties, but partisan distinctions meant little when it came to Israel. And the pro-Israel lobbying establishment, first and foremost the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has always worked hard to span the aisle on Capitol Hill, while political leaders from both parties routinely pay tribute to the lobbying group at its annual convention.

The Iran nuclear deal has thrown that consensus into crisis, leaving Jewish Americans divided between a Democratic-voting majority that polls show support the Iran deal (in numbers proportionally larger than the wider U.S. population) and a conservative minority that includes some very powerful donors, and supports the GOP-led opposition to the deal. And AIPAC’s leading role in campaigning against the deal has prompted President Barack Obama to publicly challenge the group in a manner unprecedented for a U.S. leader over the past two decades. [Continue reading…]

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Images of Iranian parking lot reveal evidence of cars, parked

Bloomberg reports: An Iranian parking lot labeled as a site of “intense concern” by an influential Washington research group hasn’t shown any signs of change for at least five years, according to satellite imagery and analysts.

The Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS, said in an Aug. 7 research note that Iran’s decision to park 20 vehicles at the Parchin military complex facility was provocative. However, according to 36 satellite images spanning five years, there has always been an average of about 20 automobiles parked at the site since concern over the Parchin complex grew in 2011.

“The ‘parking lot of death’ has been imaged dozens of times and there are clear patterns of passenger cars parked there,” said Robert Kelley, an intelligence analyst and former U.S. nuclear-weapons scientist. “There have been no indicators of a change in Iranian activities of any significance — no earth moving or sanitization whatsoever.”

With debate flaring in Washington over the July 14 agreement between Iran and world powers, some analysts and politicians say activities at Parchin underline the risks of entering into a deal with the Islamic Republic. In a statement on Saturday, Iran said analysts had confused normal roadwork with malicious intentions at the 50 square-kilometer (31 square-mile) complex.

“Parchin is an active site and movement is inevitable,” Paul Ingram, executive director of the British American Security Information Council, said in an e-mailed reply to questions. “Attempting an impossible cleanup in full view of satellites and just before Congressional votes would be stretching conspiracy theories beyond breaking point.” [Continue reading…]

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Inside the secret U.S.-Iran diplomacy that sealed nuke deal

Laura Rozen reports: When Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s president in June 2013 on a campaign platform of engaging with the West to reach a nuclear deal and improve Iran’s economy, he apparently didn’t know that Iran and the United States had already opened a secret diplomatic channel and held bilateral talks in Oman on the nuclear issue in March 2013.

“The first time I informed Rouhani of the secret negotiations with the United States was after his election to office,” former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview Aug. 4 with Iran Daily, adding that the incoming president and former Iranian nuclear negotiator was shocked when Salehi briefed him on the consultations ahead of his inauguration: “Rouhani was in disbelief.”

That is among the revelations that have emerged from interviews with senior Iranian and US officials in the wake of reaching of a final Iran nuclear accord by Iran and six world powers on July 14. The final deal — formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — is currently under a 60-day review by the US Congress. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some pro-Israel lobby groups are pressing members of Congress to kill the deal by voting next month on a resolution of disapproval that seeks to block President Barack Obama from providing the US sanctions relief promised in the accord in exchange for significant steps Iran agreed to take to limit its nuclear program. Obama has vowed to veto any such resolution, and Democrats currently believe they have enough support to sustain his veto, if required. [Continue reading…]

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Hawkishness is once again the hottest thing on the American right

Peter Beinart writes: Over the past decade, the foreign-policy debate in Washington has turned upside down. As George W. Bush’s administration drew to an end, the brand of ambitious, expensive, Manichaean, militaristic foreign policy commonly dubbed “neoconservative” seemed on the verge of collapse. In December 2006, the Iraq Study Group, which included such Republican eminences as James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Ed Meese, and Alan Simpson, repudiated Bush’s core approach to the Middle East. The group not only called for the withdrawal from Iraq by early 2008 of all U.S. combat troops not necessary for force protection. It also proposed that the United States begin a “diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions,” with the government of Iran, which Bush had included in his “axis of evil,” and that it make the Arab-Israeli peace process, long scorned by hawks, a priority. Other prominent Republicans defected too. Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon called the president’s Iraq policy “absurd” if not “criminal.” George Will, the dean of conservative columnists, deemed neoconservatism a “spectacularly misnamed radicalism” that true conservatives should disdain.

That was then. Today, hawkishness is the hottest thing on the American right. With the exception of Rand Paul, the GOP presidential contenders are vying to take the most aggressive stance against Iran and the Islamic State, or ISIS. The most celebrated freshman Republican senator is Tom Cotton, who gained fame with a letter to Iran’s leaders warning that the United States might not abide by a nuclear deal. According to recent polls, GOP voters now see national security as more important than either cultural issues or the economy. More than three-quarters of Republicans want American ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq, and a plurality says that stopping Iran’s nuclear program requires an immediate military strike.

What explains the change? Above all, it’s the legend of the surge. [Continue reading…]

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Obama on war and peace

Robin Wright writes: President Obama was in a reflective mood when he met with a group of journalists at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after he delivered a combative speech defending the Iran deal. He is, in private meetings, a congenial stoic, even as he chews Nicorette gum to stay ahead of an old vice. But his frustration—that the bigger message of his foreign policy is being lost in the political furies over Iran—was conspicuous. He made clear that the proposed deal—the most ambitious foreign-policy initiative of his Presidency—is less about Iran than about getting America off its war track; Obama believes that Washington, almost by default, too often unwisely deploys the military as the quickest solution to international crises.

Obama makes many of his pitches in the Roosevelt Room, a modest, windowless chamber with a conference table. When the West Wing was built, in 1902, it was originally the President’s office. A portrait of Franklin Roosevelt is on one wall; a picture of Teddy Roosevelt, as a Rough Rider on horseback, hangs over the fireplace. The most striking piece in the room is the smallest: The 1906 Nobel Prize, the first won by an American and the first by a U.S. President, is encased behind glass. It went to Teddy Roosevelt for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese war. Only two other Presidents–Woodrow Wilson, for the League of Nations, and Jimmy Carter, after leaving office, for promoting human rights—had won it before Obama was named, just months after his election, more for his spirit than any specific achievement. As he enters the final eighteen months of his Presidency, he seems to want to prove that he deserves it. [Continue reading…]

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Obama challenges AIPAC on Iran deal

The New York Times reports: President Obama had a tough message for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, the powerful pro-Israel group that is furiously campaigning against the Iran nuclear accord, when he met with two of its leaders at the White House this week. The president accused Aipac of spending millions of dollars in advertising against the deal and spreading false claims about it, people in the meeting recalled.

So Mr. Obama told the Aipac leaders that he intended to hit back hard.

The next day in a speech at American University, Mr. Obama denounced the deal’s opponents as “lobbyists” doling out millions of dollars to trumpet the same hawkish rhetoric that had led the United States into war with Iraq. The president never mentioned Aipac by name, but his target was unmistakable.

The remarks reflected an unusually sharp rupture between a sitting American president and the most potent pro-Israel lobbying group, which was founded in 1951 a few years after the birth of Israel. [Continue reading…]

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Iran’s Jewish community gets behind nuclear deal with the US

Global Post reports: Tapo, one of six kosher restaurants in Tehran, has become an informal hangout for the city’s small Jewish community. During a lunchtime rush last week customers ate savory kebabs while excitedly discussing the signing of the US-Iran nuclear accord.

“There was lots of joy for us,” said Horiel, a Jewish customer who declined to give his last name. “It was not only the Jewish community that was happy. The nation was happy.”

Most Iranian Jews strongly disagree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s denunciations of the accord. Horiel said his ancestors came from Jerusalem, “but I’m an Iranian Jew. Israel will get nothing with threats and war.” [Continue reading…]

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Israel makes veiled threats to murder more Iranian nuclear scientists

AFP reports: Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon issued a veiled threat against Iranian nuclear experts saying the Jewish state had a right to defend itself and that he was not “responsible for their lives”.

In an interview to German weekly Der Spiegel due to appear on Saturday, Yaalon said: “Iran’s nuclear ambitions must be stopped in one way or another.

“We would like this to be done through accords or sanctions,” he said. “But finally, Israel must be in a position to defend itself.”

Asked specifically about targeting Iranian experts or staging acts of sabotage, he said: “I am not responsible for the lives of the Iranian scientists.”

Several Iranian experts have been assassinated and there has been a hacking attack, both blamed by Tehran on Israel and the United States. [Continue reading…]

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Rafsanjani on future of Iran-U.S. ties, Saudi Arabia

Al Monitor reports: In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s most powerful politicians, spoke about the future of relations with the United States. He also hit back at domestic critics of Iran’s nuclear deal with six world powers, saying they are “making a mistake.” While acknowledging that Washington seems to want to “distance itself from the past,” Rafsanjani said that that approach needs to be proven in action and that the implementation of the deal would be a major step. The interview in his Tehran office on July 28 is the first Rafsanjani has conducted with a foreign media outlet since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was struck.

A senior cleric and two-time president, Rafsanjani also spoke about regional crises, including Tehran’s tense relationship with Riyadh. Arguing that Iran “does not inherently have any issues with Saudi Arabia or other Arab countries,” he pointed to Saudi-Iranian engagement in the aftermath of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War despite Riyadh’s prior backing of Saddam Hussein. Rafsanjani emphasized that cooperation with Saudi Arabia and other regional states is “a priority in our constitution.” Of note, Rafsanjani headed crucial talks with Riyadh in the 1990s, along with then-Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rouhani, ushering in important security coordination.

In the interview, Rafsanjani also referred to the order from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, to repair ties with Riyadh after the 1987 killing of hundreds of Iranian pilgrims in Mecca, seemingly hinting at the possibility of normalizing the regional situation “with a swift move.” He also revealed that late Saudi King Abdullah had pressed for him to attend the hajj pilgrimage on several occasions “toward the end of his life.” [Continue reading…]

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God’s chosen senator, Chuck Schumer, stands with Netanyahu in opposing Iran deal

The New York Times reports: The decision by Senator Chuck Schumer to oppose President Obama’s deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program rattled the Democratic firewall around the accord, but supporters said Democratic defections in New York and South Florida would not be enough to bring down the agreement.

Republican leaders in the House and Senate have promised a vote in mid-September on a resolution to disapprove the nuclear accord between Iran and the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China, which in itself would be a blow to Mr. Obama’s prestige.

But to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, opponents have two high hurdles. They will need 60 votes in the Senate for a resolution of disapproval to overcome a filibuster by accord supporters. If they get that, the president will veto it. Then opponents must secure two thirds of the lawmakers in both chambers to override the veto.

Mr. Schumer, of New York, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate and likely Democratic leader in 2017, said Thursday night that he would vote for the resolution of disapproval and a veto override. Mr. Schumer’s voice is powerful, and his politics are wily, but he alone cannot stop the international agreement. [Continue reading…]

As M.J. Rosenberg has pointed out, Schumer believes that it is his God-given mission to serve in the U.S. Senate as the guardian of Israel.

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Why Iran isn’t Nazi Germany

Peter Beinart writes: Mike Huckabee’s sin was being too vivid.

Last week, after the Republican presidential hopeful said that by signing the Iran nuclear deal, President Barack Obama “would take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven,” a parade of organizations and politicians accused him of inflammatory language and bad taste. But in both the United States and Israel, Huckabee’s core assumption—that the Iranian government is genocidally anti-Semitic—is mainstream. In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that “The ayatollahs in Iran, they deny the Holocaust while planning another genocide against our people.” Last month, Fox News host Sean Hannity called the Iran deal “the equivalent of giving Adolf Hitler weapons of mass destruction.” The fact that a nuclear attack on Israel would also kill Palestinians, argued Texas Senator Ted Cruz recently, would not deter Tehran because “they would view the murder of those Palestinians” as “perfectly acceptable collateral damage to annihilating millions of Jews.”

Far from being marginal or extreme, Huckabee’s claim—that Iranian leaders seek another Holocaust—sits at the emotional core of the debate over the nuclear accord with Tehran. But the closer you look, the weaker that claim is. [Continue reading…]

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