America, Iran and the Israel Lobby

Important changes occurred in Washington during the past few weeks that cast the Israel lobby in an unflattering light. This exposure to criticism is unprecedented in its nature and scope.

The story began when the Israelis refused the current agreement that the United States and other countries concluded with Iran. The Israel lobbies — any committee concerned with general American-Israeli matters — followed suit and adopted the rejection. Among the Israel lobbies, the most well known lobby is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is officially registered as a lobby for Israel. While the administration was preparing to begin negotiations with Tehran, AIPAC stipulated that its supporters in Congress draw up a resolution to impose further sanctions on Iran. They pushed strongly for this resolution behind closed doors in the House and Senate. AIPAC managed to gather 16 members of the Democratic Party to vote with the Republicans in the Senate against the Democratic president, giving them a comfortable majority with which to pass the resolution. As a result, the American political arena has witnessed an assault on AIPAC.

This move provoked anger from the White House, and led the National Security Council to release a statement saying that if “certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American public and say so.”

The White House’s anger is understandable, but the greatest indicator of the widespread dissatisfaction with AIPAC’s actions is the public opposition coming from formal and informal sources that have always been known to support Israel. Senator Dianne Feinstein, for example, is among the staunchest supporters of Israel in Congress. However, even she gave a speech in front of the Senate in which she stated that: “While I recognize and share Israel’s concern, we cannot let Israel determine when and where the United States goes to war… [by] stating that the United States should provide military support to Israel in a formal resolution should it attack Iran.” In regard to the media, the splendid John Stewart, who employs sarcasm to criticize American politics and society, said — with evident sarcasm — “the senators from the great state of Israel are against [Obama’s] diplomacy.” The truth is that these statements demonstrate a language that is both strong and strange for mainstream American politics and media, one that is never used in regards to Israel. For the first time you hear sincere words from mainstream America commenting on the disparity between American and Israeli interests. These words, although they come indirectly, even suggest that Israel is pushing America to wage a proxy war on Iran.

The Israel lobby, as all the studies have shown, prefers to work behind the scenes. It doesn’t want many to know what it does, as many who have worked for it have said. Likewise, casting light on the role that AIPAC has played in the negotiations with Iran depicts it in a negative light. The New York Times, for example, frankly reported that behind the positions taken by members of Congress are political expenses in an election year after AIPAC has “lobbied Congress to ratchet up the pressure on Iran.”

Although AIPAC has since retreated a bit from its initial sanctions resolution and called for a delay in legislation, it seems that this is a tactical retreat that does not alter the transformations taking place with the Israeli lobby in Washington. Perhaps the most important characteristic of these transformations is that they did not come from the top down, but rather from the bottom up. They came from political and civilian society and in American politics this is the level that creates policy.