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August 27, 2023
Key Takeaways:
- Why did the chicken cross the road? I asked leading Republicans for their answers. They didn't ask that question at Wednesday's debate but then again, neither the Fox News moderators nor any of the candidates on stage asked Ron DeSantis (polling second behind Trump) why he thought dog-whistling antisemitic George Soros conspiracy theories on national TV was a good idea.
- Tensions with Iran appear to be de-escalating following the prisoner deal earlier this month. Once again, opponents of diplomacy cannot come up with better alternatives and continue to insist on unrealistic criteria for evaluating diplomatic outcomes.
- Jewish members of Congress supported President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran by more than a 2-1 margin and Jewish voters continue to support diplomacy with Iran by similar margins.
- Former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Bark, who I'm guessing is pro-Israel, urged Jewish Americans to "talk over the heads of AIPAC" (which he criticized for its silence) and talk directly to members of Congress in support of the Israeli democracy protest movement. A good way to do that is by urging your member of Congress to support Rep. Jan Schakowsky's (D-IL) resolution in support of Israeli democracy.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and upcoming events.
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Hi Steve,
Why did the chicken cross the road? These answers from leading Republicans might surprise you.
At Wednesday's Republican debate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis twice dog whistled antisemitic George Soros conspiracy theories. Despite their eagerness to attack each other, none of the Republicans on the stage called DeSantis out, proving again, as Donald Trump has repeatedly proven, that antisemitic rhetoric is not a hindrance to success within the Republican Party. The Fox News moderators did not challenge DeSantis either. They know who their viewers are.
Alon Pinkas wrote that the Republican Party is Trump's MAGA movement in style and substance, noting that of the eight candidates on Wednesday's stage, "only Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of the great state of Arkansas and currently polling at 0.7 percent, clearly raised his hand to indicate he would not back Trump" if Trump were convicted in one or more of his four indictments. (Christie did not raise his hand.)
If you missed Wednesday's debate, read Neil Steinberg's 13 takeaways and you'll know all you need to know about the candidates Trump might choose to be his running mate. I have a feeling that inmate no. P01135809 won't choose Hutchinson.
Tensions with Iran are de-escalating. Some developments are hard to understand. Some aren't. This news, reported by Laura Rozen, is good news: "With the prisoner deal announced earlier this month, reports that Iran has significantly slowed its accumulation of 60% higher enriched uranium, the de-facto extension of the Yemen truce going on 18 months and broader Iranian-Saudi rapprochement, and the absence of a repeat of deadly tit-for-tat clashes between U.S. and Iranian proxy forces that killed a U.S. contractor in Syria in March, the United States sees some signs of an easing of tensions with Iran and broader regional de-escalation."
What's not to like? That's all good news. But it comes with no 100% money-back guarantees, and we all love absolute certainty. We'd love to put the whole Iran thing behind us. That's why, on a gut, reptilian level, we can see the appeal of right-wing calls for sanctions against Iran severe enough to starve Iran's population to the extent that they are too weak to press the button on the centrifuges or military action that would level Iran. But then we wake up (yes, it's good to be woke--the opposite is asleep) and we see the immorality and ineffectiveness of sanctions and military action under these circumstances.
President Obama's Iran Deal imposed significant, verifiable restraints on Iran's nuclear weapons program. Diplomacy was working until Trump walked away from the deal and Iran then moved from more than a year away from nuclear weapons breakout to days or weeks away ("breakout time" is the amount of time needed to create enough fissile material for one nuclear bomb).
Critics of the Iran Deal lost the battle to block it because they had no credible alternative likely to yield a better result. I understand their craving for certainty and their mistrust of nuance and complexity. It's the same impatience that triggers MAGA emotions. But rational thinking tends to yield better results.
Our right-wing friends have no new Iran Deal to attack, so they are warming up by attacking the prisoner deal. In exchange for the release of five dual-citizen American hostages, the U.S. will free Iranian nationals held for violating sanctions with Iran and release $6 billion in Iranian assets via safeguards that guarantee the money can only be used for humanitarian purposes (this won't cost American taxpayers anything and the process complies with Trump-era sanctions). If you are against this deal, you are against Americans coming back home and you are against Iranian people having access to food and medicine.
But even though the mechanism by which Iran obtains access to this $6 billion guarantees that it can only be used for humanitarian purposes, doesn’t that free up $6 billion that Iran currently spends on humanitarian needs for other purposes, such as terrorism and missile development? This is a red herring. Let’s go step by step.
The $6 billion is Iranian money in South Korea earned from “oil sales and frozen by Seoul under pressure by the Trump administration following its unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran known as the JCPOA...Iran is essentially getting access to its own money.. the funds in South Korea will be transferred to a bank account in Qatar under the control of its government — a close partner of the U.S. — to ensure that the funds can be used only to purchase humanitarian goods, such as medicine and food.”
The argument that the money is fungible is a red herring because humanitarian exemptions have been part of all sanctions regimes even under the most hawkish presidents, including Trump and including with respect to Iran. If you don’t like this deal because money is fungible you are saying that you oppose humanitarian exemptions for any sanctions on any country. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong but it does mean that you would be arguing for a policy the U.S. has never adopted. You might want to ask yourself why.
As a practical matter, Iran’s previous behavior has shown that it will spend what it needs to spend on nefarious activities regardless of sanctions, no more and no less. We didn't see a spike in nefarious spending after the JCPOA was negotiated and hundreds of millions of dollars were sent directly to Iran in cash. We saw a spike in nefarious Iranian spending and activity after Trump walked away from the JCPOA and imposed what he called “maximum pressure” with increased sanctions.
Diplomacy requires negotiation and compromise with bad actors. Saying no prisoner deal unless Iran gives up its nuclear program and stops its other deleterious activities is the same as saying no prisoner deal at all.
The question is whether we are better off with this prisoner deal or with no deal, not whether this deal solves all the world's problems and gives everyone ice cream cones. Benjamin Netanyahu traded over 1,000 Hamas prisoners, 280 of whom had been sentenced to life in prison for planning and perpetrating attacks against Israeli targets, for Gilad Shalit. Was Bibi soft on terrorism? Was he so naive that he did not realize that negotiating with terrorists might encourage more terrorism? Or did he weigh the risks and make a hard choice? The U.S. and Israel have long histories of negotiating with terrorists and other malign actors. That's life in the real world.
Supporting diplomacy with Iran is smart politics as well as smart policy. Polling from August 2022 showed that Americans are more likely to support members of Congress who prioritize diplomacy. Jewish voters support reentering the JCPOA 68% to 32%, similar to the more than 2-1 margin by which Jewish members of Congress supported the original deal in 2015.
No members of Congress who supported the Iran Deal in 2015 lost in 2016. Congress should not make diplomacy harder by passing legislation that impedes negotiations with Iran and members of Congress should not worry about electoral consequences for supporting smart policies (although they should expect a lot of noise from the usual suspects).
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. In last week's newsletter I misspelled "AIPAC" as "AIPA" in one instance. I listed all seven incumbent Republicans thus far endorsed by AIPAC who represent districts that Biden carried in 2020, but I incorrectly stated that there were six.
In Case You Missed It:
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Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak criticized AIPAC for its refusal to advocate for Israel's protest movement and for its failure to arrange for members of Congress who visited Israel on an AIPAC trip earlier this month to meet with leaders of the movement. He encouraged Jewish Americans to donate money to the protest movement and said that “it's important to talk over the heads of AIPAC to talk with members of these 535 members of the legislative branch of America" (Barak advised the protest movement to follow the practices of the House of Hillel while comparing AIPAC to the House of Shammai).
- One way to go over AIPAC's head and talk directly to members of Congress is by urging your member of Congress to cosponsor H.Con.Res.61, Rep. Jan Schakowsky's (D-IL) resolution in support of Israeli democracy. On August 24, Ben Samuels reported that 17 leading U.S. Jewish organizations support this resolution and that the number of co-sponsors has more than tripled since it was introduced on July 27.
- Eric Alterman writes that the far right is the source of the vast majority of antisemitism in the United States today—and of direct threats to the republic. The Anti-Defamation League should be saying so more insistently. He asks a good question: What does the ADL stand for today?
Tweets of the Week. Matt Duss and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).
Twitter Threads of the Week. Jeremy Newberger and Rabbi Jill Jacobs (on whether we should participate in protests on Shabbat).
Video Clip of the Week. Fun Fact: Every artist and every band in the world is at its best when it is Chuck Berry's backup band.
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My most popular Times of Israel posts are How Not To Define Antisemitism and Pro-Israel Or Pro-Bibi? I periodically update my Medium posts on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism. You can read my most recent effort to define "pro-Israel" here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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