AIPAC goes all out against Iran agreement but can't defeat it: Analyst

An American political commentator in Los Angeles says the Israel lobby in the United States is basically going all out to try to defeat the Iran nuclear agreement in Congress, but probably they do not have enough votes needed to kill the deal.

James Morris, editor of America-hijacked.com, a blog charting the influence of the powerful Israeli lobby in American domestic and foreign policy, public life and the election process, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Friday.

“With regard to the Iran deal, right now the Israel lobby in America is basically going all out to try to defeat it. And when I talk about the Israel lobby I am referring to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC], which has lots of influence on both the Democrats and also the Republicans, and also the neoconservatives, which are the upper echelons of the Israel lobby,” Morris said.

“You’ve got Jewish neoconservative like Bill Crystal and his Emergency Committee for Israel, and you’ve got various political ad campaigns that are funded by the various factions of the Israel lobby, and their commercials that are running almost nonstop on American television to defeat the Iran deal, and of course those are funded by Jewish donors, like Sheldon Adelson,” he added. “So there’s a heavy lobbying effort on the US Congress and on the American public as well.”

“And you see senators, like Charles Schumer -- of course he is the Jewish senator -- who spoke before the AIPAC convention few years ago, saying in Hebrew that he was a guardian of Israel in the Senate… And you’ve got others like Ben Cardin, who is Jewish, he is on the fence… what’s this all goes back to is you have these people that do not have American interests at heart, and they are always looking at what America should do [for Israel],”  he stated.

Most Republicans oppose the nuclear agreement, but they need a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress to override a presidential veto, and to reach that threshold, Republicans need Democratic support.

In a major break with the White House, Senator Schumer from New York announced last week that he would vote against the conclusion of nuclear talks reached between Iran and the P5+1 group –  the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany –  last month in Vienna, Austria.

Moments after Schumer’s announcement, Representative Eliot Engel, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also declared that he would join Obama’s rivals to oppose the nuclear accord.

The decisions by Schumer and Engel are considered a blow to Obama, who is striving to save the Iran nuclear agreement in Congress, which is expected to pass a resolution opposing the measure.

“Many America-first patriots -- like myself -- are just fed up with this, as they try to defeat this Iran deal and to basically get America fight another war for Israel against Iran, like they did with Iraq,” Morris said.

“President Barack Obama was completely correct when he had said that the same individuals that had pushed for the Iraq war were now pushing for war with Iran,” he noted.

“And I don’t think they would be able to override the veto. They may be able to succeed with the vote, because it only needs a majority in the Congress to basically reject the deal, and prevent President Obama from lifting the sanctions. But when President Obama comes back and vetoes that, I don’t think they have the two-thirds yet to override the veto,” the American activist opined. 

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