WarSclerotic

In May 1996, when he was first elected to the office of prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu was already warning anyone who would listen about the dangers of a nuclear Iran. At the time he spoke of Iran as “the largest existential threat facing Israel since 1948.” At a Likud rally a year earlier, Netanyahu also warned of a nuclear Iran.

At that time, Barack Obama was a law school lecturer at the University of Chicago, one year away from entering political life in the Senate as a representative from Illinois. Obama was an extremely accomplished lecturer, and that year was promoted to senior lecturer. In those days the ambitious Obama was devoted to a number of issues. It is entirely uncertain, however, that Iran was one of them. We can assume that had he thought about Iran, it was more in the vein of human rights and an oppressed people.

Neither Netanyahu nor Obama ever imagined in their wildest dreams that one day they would find themselves butting heads with one another, in what appears to be the fight of their lives, over the issue of a nuclear Iran. Obama is now fighting for his desire to leave behind a legacy and enter the history books in the mold of John F. Kennedy. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is fighting for the role allotted to him by history, which is to correctly manage an Iranian crisis that he believes threatens the future of the State of Israel, in addition to his desire to uphold the Begin doctrine which states that an enemy state of Israel’s must not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

Fate has arranged a very interesting showdown between the two. Although they lead two allied countries with historical ties predicated on shared values, they both hold very different worldviews. It was evident from the outset that they were on a collision course. Iran has become a sparring ground for two leaders who simply could never have been friends. The writing was on the wall as far back as 1996, before they even met.

This week their fight reached a new level. After the signing of the Vienna deal, which one of them views as a bad deal while the other sees a masterpiece of diplomacy, the quarrel has moved to America. The major battle is over swaying Congress, but also public opinion.

Congress is supposed to decide within 60 days, by Sept. 17. Until then the fight will be waged in America. Netanyahu’s management of the campaign is forcing Obama to continue fighting on the Iranian front. One wants a legacy, the other wants to preserve his country. The desires are not exactly identical. For Netanyahu this game is being played abroad, for Obama it is being played at home.

The fate of the ‘Little Satan’

While there is a Republican majority in Congress, it is not enough, because a presidential veto means that a two-thirds majority is required to nullify the deal with Iran. In the meantime, it was a good week for Obama, who saw three important democratic senators — Tim Kaine from Virginia, Barbara Boxer from California, and Bill Nelson from Florida — come out in support of the deal. It is still unclear though how other Democratic senators intend to vote, among them several Jewish senators.

The timing, incidentally, is playing into Obama’s favor because election season is underway in the U.S., and it’s hard to envision Democrats, in an election year, handicapping their candidate, Hillary Clinton, whose name is also on the Iran deal. This is no simple matter.

Netanyahu is waging a complex campaign. On one hand, public opinion in the U.S. and Israel doesn’t put any trust in Iran, thus the deal is viewed as bad. Netanyahu also has the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on his side to help fight the deal, and even Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog (Labor) is opposed to it. Netanyahu’s problem is the rest of the world, and that is a big problem.

This is precisely what led Obama, in his speech at Washington University, to tell Netanyahu that “with the exception of Israel, every country supports the agreement,” and therefore the prime minister “is wrong.” Obama forgot to add that Israel is sitting in the crosshairs of Iran’s missile arsenal, not Moscow, Washington, Paris, London, Berlin or Beijing, which conducted the negotiations with the Iranians.

Obama sees a legacy, the world sees dollars, and only Israel sees a nuclear program. To each their own interests. To each their own concerns. We can imagine that Netanyahu would happily swap concerns with the other leaders. In contrast to Obama, however, Israeli leaders first and foremost think about their country’s existence, and only then about a legacy.

It was another stormy week for the Obama-Netanyahu relationship. No one is even trying to conceal the discord anymore. We can assume their respective memoirs will include a few choice anecdotes on one another. The tragic aspect of this story before us is that they were supposed to be allies against the shared Iranian threat. From Iran’s perspective, America is the “Great Satan” and we are the “Little Satan.” Obama shattered the equation. The Great Satan has become a partner. And what will become of the Little Satan?

In his speech, Obama attempted to ascribe to himself attributes reserved for the likes of Ronald Reagan and Kennedy. But the comparisons were out of place. He sought to attribute to Ayatollah Khomeini the rationality of Karl Marx. But Marx’s disciple Nikita Khrushchev was not Khomeini’s successor Ayatollah Khamenei, and this is what Obama does not understand.

When the Cuban missile crisis erupted in 1962, there were certain points where Khrushchev almost soiled his pants. Even during the negotiations between Reagan (whom Obama mentioned) and Mikhail Gorbachev, there was never a moment where Reagan appeared anxious. On the other hand, during the negotiations with Iran, Obama struggled to conceal his desire to get a deal done. At no point throughout the process did Khamenei look anxious. Quite the opposite. Without fail, at the start of each new round of talks he would boastfully disparage America. Nothing less.

And this is where we must ask the grand question: Where is American dignity, where is the strength? Obama opposed the war in Iraq and used it as a reason to avoid the fight against Iran.

But this is precisely the thing: The gigantic gap between the U.S. and Iranian defense budgets ($600 billion versus $15 billion) should have made the Iranian fold without a shot ever being fired, and with only a little more pressure applied during the negotiations. Meanwhile, Obama didn’t hesitate to use a cheap trick against detractors of the deal. He compared the Republicans to the masses in Tehran shouting “Death to America.” This was not well received in the U.S.

Over 50 years ago, President Kennedy delivered a speech very similar to Obama’s this week, in which he hailed diplomacy as a means with which to stave off nuclear conflict with the USSR.

Obama’s supporters tried comparing him to Kennedy this week. Obama himself loves the comparison.

Let us just remember one small difference: One of them empowered America, the other empowered Iran.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s hopes of preserving the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers were dealt a setback on Thursday when Sen. Chuck Schumer, one of the top Democrats in the Senate, said he would oppose the agreement.

Schumer’s opposition, announced in a lengthy statement, could pave the way for more of Obama’s fellow Democrats to come out against the nuclear pact announced on July 14 between Iran and six world powers, including the United States.

The New York senator is among the most influential Jewish lawmakers in the United States. He was the first Senate Democrat to announce his opposition to the agreement.

Another influential Jewish lawmaker, Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, also said on Thursday he would oppose the nuclear pact, in a statement obtained by Reuters.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing U.S. lawmakers to oppose the nuclear agreement, which he views as a threat to Israel’s survival. Some pro-Israel groups have also been spending millions of dollars on an advertising campaign to push members of Congress to vote against the deal.

Opposition to the deal is almost solid from Republicans arguing that the U.S. gave away too much in negotiations, and from many Democrats sympathetic to Israel, which considers the pact a disaster.

It is nearly certain that the Republican-controlled Congress will reject the deal, and that Obama will veto that bill. That means the suspense is over whether Obama can corral enough Democratic support to sustain his veto and keep the agreement alive.

Obama has been engaged in his own lobbying effort, including a combative speech on Wednesday in which he said abandoning the agreement would open up the prospect of war.

The U.S. Congress has until Sept. 17 to consider a resolution of disapproval of the Iran deal, which would eliminate Obama’s ability to waive all sanctions on Iran imposed by the U.S. Congress, a key component of the agreement.

Lawmakers will begin debating whether to reject the deal when they return from their August recess on Sept. 8.

Schumer insisted he was not influenced by party or politics and had not been pressured.

“Advocates on both sides have strong cases for their point of view that cannot simply be dismissed. This has made evaluating the agreement a difficult and deliberate endeavor, and after deep study, careful thought and considerable soul-searching, I have decided I must oppose the agreement and will vote yes on a motion of disapproval,” he said.

Obama has promised a veto if the resolution is passed by the House and Senate.

Republicans would need at least 13 Democrats in the Senate and 44 in the House to vote against Obama to muster the two-thirds majorities in both chambers needed to override a veto. So, while Thursday’s announcements are a blow to the president, opponents of the deal still face an uphill battle to enact a disapproval resolution.

Several Democrats in both the House and Senate have already come out in favor of the nuclear deal, including Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader. Schumer’s colleague from New York, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, announced her support for the agreement on Thursday.

A handful of House Democrats in addition to Engel have said they oppose the deal, including Rep. Steve Israel, a member of the chamber’s Democratic leadership.

Schumer said lawmakers would come to their own conclusions but he would try to persuade other senators to vote against the Iran deal. Schumer is currently the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate and is in line to succeed Harry Reid as the party’s leader in the chamber when Reid retires in early 2017.

A congressional aide said Engel would vote for a resolution of disapproval and also vote to override an Obama veto if the resolution passes Congress. However, Engel did not say he would lobby against the deal among other lawmakers.

Schumer’s opposition was first reported by the Huffington Post. He said in his statement he opposed the nuclear deal because he believed Iran would not change and that the deal would let it eliminate sanctions while retaining “nuclear and non-nuclear power.”

“Better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be,” Schumer said.

The White House had no immediate comment on Schumer’s announcement, which was distributed by the Senate Republican leadership after it was released by his office.

The liberal group MoveOn.org said its 8 million members would organize a “donor strike” to withhold campaign contributions from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as well as “any Democratic candidate who succeeds in undermining the president’s diplomacy with Iran.”

Senate leader to Obama: Stop demonizing Iran deal opponents

Meanwhile, Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that Obama was treating his drive to win congressional support for the deal like a political campaign, making attacks on opponents that need to stop.

McConnell’s comments came as the Senate dispersed for the summer recess, which both sides in the dispute plan to use to shore up support for showdown votes next month. They followed a tumultuous early debate over the nuclear agreement.

Obama so far “is treating this like a political campaign,” McConnell told reporters. “Demonize your opponents, gin up the base, get Democrats all angry and, you know, rally around the president. To me, it’s a different kind of issue.”

The majority leader has said he wants senators to spend next month’s debate over the Iran deal planted in their seats — an unusual step, underscoring the issue’s gravity.

“It’s those hard-liners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal,” Obama said of Tehran demonstrators in a speech Wednesday defending the multi-nation agreement. “They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus.”

McConnell pointedly objected to those remarks, saying, “The president ought to treat this like a serious national security debate rather than a political campaign and tone down the rhetoric and talk about the facts.”

McConnell further criticized Obama’s characterization of the deal in the speech, saying it was “absurd” to argue that lawmakers must essentially choose between the agreement and going to war.

Obama made a “huge mistake” with that argument, McConnell told reporters.

“It’s not this deal versus war. That’s the argument they’ve been making during the whole negotiation. It’s either this deal or a better deal, or more sanctions,” he said.

In his address Wednesday, Obama said that if the Republican-controlled Congress blocked the deal, it would accelerate Tehran’s path to a nuclear bomb.

“Let’s not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon,” Obama said.

But McConnell was not buying it. “That’s an absurd argument,” he said.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker similarly criticized Obama’s comments, saying, “He’s trying to shut down debate by saying those who have questions, legitimate questions, are somehow unpatriotic, are somehow compared to hardliners in Iran.”

In recent weeks, some Republicans have pulled no punches to criticize Obama over the agreement, which would lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for Tehran mothballing its ambitions to build a nuclear weapon for at least a decade.

Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz said the pact would make the Obama administration “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” because lifting the sanctions would restore money to Iran that it could use to support the terrorist groups it sponsors.

Another Republican presidential contender, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, said Obama is marching Jews “to the door of the oven” — a reference to the Holocaust and Israel’s strong opposition to the agreement.

On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain, a leading Republican, said of Obama, “He’s carrying on in the finest traditions of Neville Chamberlain,” the British prime minister best known for unsuccessfully trying to appease Germany’s Adolf Hitler before World War II.

Meanwhile, renowned lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote in USA Today that according to precedent, the Iran deal should require a majority vote of support in the House and the Senate to be considered legally binding.