What about the Iran lobby?
Much of the political Left was critical of the First Gulf War, also known as Operation Desert Storm, against Iraq in January-February 1991 and of the Second Gulf War, also known as the Iraq War, in 2003. Many leftists viewed both of these wars as motivated by greed for oil. A particularly vicious strain of American public discourse surfaced when Jewish neoconservatives were blamed and vilified for supporting the war against Iraq in 2003, with all the accompanying conspiracy theories of a ubiquitous Israel lobby forcing the hand of the American president.
The world is funny that way. A little over a decade after the Iraq War, leftists have no problem accommodating the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions against Iran, despite the fact that this deal is precisely about the very things for which they criticized U.S. Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush: oil and money. Only now we are not talking about greedy warmongering for oil. This is greedy pretend peacemaking for oil. There is no difference. The Left has been very clever about framing it in all the right terms, and for that, they can thank the Iran lobby.
Much has been said in the U.S. about the supposedly all-powerful Israel lobby, but hardly anything has been uttered about the Iran lobby. That in itself should be a cause for concern, as its success has become the success of the White House itself.
The Iran lobby has done an excellent job of helping sanitize a nuclear deal with one of the vilest regimes of the world, at a time of grave instability in the Middle East. In the process, it has succeeded in vilifying the people who are against the deal as belonging to a sinister lobby of "warmongering" Jewish Americans and Israelis. This is quite a feat.
At the head of this effort was the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a group that, according to Iranian dissident Hassan Daioleslam and Iranian-American activist Hassan Dai, is a front for the Iranian regimes' lobbying efforts in the U.S. Certainly, the lobby has achieved everything that the mullahs could possibly want from the U.S. and more.
Ironically and very fittingly, Professor Steven Walt of Harvard University (the author of the infamous book "The Israel Lobby," which slandered American Jews and Israel) is "the biggest NIAC booster in academia" according to Lee Smith. (Smith published the extremely damning piece titled "Meet the Iran lobby" in Tablet Magazine on September 1.) The article details the rise of the Iran lobby and its leader Trita Parsi, a Swedish-Iranian immigrant to the U.S., and its success, culminating in the current deal. Indeed, much of this success has been built on the vilification of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Israel, claiming that all that stood between prosperous relations between the U.S. and Iran was Israel. In fact, Parsi wrote a book claiming as much -- "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S." As Smith explains in his revealing article, NIAC found the White House very receptive to its efforts -- so much so that the lobbying effort of NIAC simply became White House policy.
Walt is only one of many who have big qualms about the Israel lobby but take no issue with the Iranian lobby. It is funny how some lobbies appear better than others, especially those where enormous financial benefits can be gained. And there can be no doubt as to the financial benefits of the Iran nuclear deal. The age-old adage, in all its triteness, has never been more appropriate than in the description of those advocating the deal: Follow the money.
Iran holds the world's fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Whoever claims that this deal is about anything but oil, gas and getting a piece of the multibillion-dollar business expected to result from the lifting of sanctions, is simply being mendacious. That includes the White House.
Meanwhile, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei made it clear at a conference held by the Iranian Shiite Ahl Al-Bayt organization on August 17 that Iran still considers the U.S. a perfect enemy:
"The power-hungry order led by the United States of America is the perfectly clear embodiment of 'the concept of the enemy.' America has no human morality. It carries out evil crimes under the guise of flowery statements and smiles. The enemy's plot is two pronged: creating conflict and [exerting] influence. [The enemy sows conflict] among governments, and, worse, among the nations. At this stage, they are using the Shia and the Sunna to create conflict among the nations. Britain is an expert in sowing conflict; the Americans are its apprentices."
U.S. President Barack Obama, in his rhetorical attempts to persuade Americans to buy into this nefarious deal, has redirected the purpose of his frazzled old slogan of "Hope and Change," claiming that this is the best that can be done about Iran. Apparently, we are to believe that hope will do the rest of the trick and bring about the much-needed "change" in the actions of the Iranian regime. The White House is doing an amazing job of bringing everyone -- from ice cream sellers to former secretaries of state -- forward to endorse the deal. Networking has always worked extremely well for Obama.
On August 31, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright came out (again) in support of the deal, claiming that it is "dangerous not to pursue dialogue." These kinds of slogans are meaningless and simply serve to pull the wool over the eyes of Americans.
It is time for members of Congress to pull that wool from their eyes.
Judith Bergman is a writer and political analyst living in Israel.
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