New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who had been on the fence about the Iran deal, announced Friday that he was backing President Barack Obama on the agreement.
“I bring to my analysis the full weight of my responsibilities as a member of Congress, and my perspective as an American Jew who is both a Democrat and a strong supporter of Israel,” Nadler said in a statement. “I have sought to ignore the political pressures, as well as the demagoguery and hateful rhetoric on both sides that I think has been harmful to the overall political discourse.”
He added, “After carefully studying the agreement and the arguments and analyses from all sides, I have concluded that, of all the alternatives, approval of the JCPOA [the name of the Iran deal], for all its flaws, gives us the best chance of stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Accordingly, I will support the agreement…”
Obama thanked Nadler, regarded as a key voice on the issue.
“In our conversations, Jerry raised specific concerns relating to Israeli security and the U.S. commitment to countering Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region,” Obama said in a statement. “I wanted to respond to the thoughtful questions Jerry raised, and I am pleased that our discussions were ultimately productive.”
To counter nail-biting on Capitol Hill over the Iran nuclear deal, particularly nerves frayed over Israel’s security, Obama delivered a message this week: All options are still on the table.
The President directed it at Nadler, in an open letter with Wednesday’s date. But it addressed many questions on the minds of many legislators in one written piece. A day earlier, Obama also penned an editorial backing up his arguments and distributed it to news organizations.
Nadler had publicly agonized over the process of considering which way to go.
“What I do know is that no member of Congress should take this decision lightly,” he wrote this month in an op-ed for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Nadler’s priority in his vote is the security of the United States and of Israel, its loyal ally.
Like Schumer, Nadler is Jewish.
‘Including military means’
Obama was emphatic about how far he’d go to keep Iran from a nuclear weapon.
“As I have repeatedly emphasized, my Administration will take whatever means are necessary to achieve that goal, including military means,” he wrote to Nadler.
This goes for “the life of the deal and beyond,” the letter read. The President dedicated paragraphs to avowing the financial and strategic muscle his administration has put behind Israel’s defense.
In the tug-of-war for legislative sign-off on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the name for the anti-nuke deal — Nadler could be seen as the red mark in the middle of the rope.
His congressional district covers much of Manhattan and a chunk of Brooklyn and has one of the country’s largest Jewish constituencies. It also includes the area of the World Trade Center, the main site of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
But despite tremendous pressure in the 9/11 aftermath — including from Israel — to go along with the Iraq war effort, Nadler voted against “the Bush administration’s crusade against Saddam Hussein,” he wrote in his op-ed. “I was the only Jewish member in the New York delegation to go against the president.”
Obama vs. Netanyahu
The Obama administration is tugging hard at one end; on the other are Republicans and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has done the political equivalent of jumping up and down and yelling.
He has visited Capitol Hill to hold a speech against the deal — seen by many as an affront to Obama. Groups of U.S. legislators have gone to Israel to visit Netanyahu.
And a major Jewish lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has thrown its full weight behind Netanyahu.
“From our perspective, this is one of the most significant mobilization efforts in our organization’s history,” an AIPAC official said.
To counter its opponents’ efforts, the Obama administration has developed an outreach playbook dozens of pages long.
Nadler was a target of that outreach, and it got him an individual meeting with the President.
Bad signs
A similar outreach target, Rep. Eliot Engel, a liberal from the Bronx, who is also Jewish and the ranking Democrat of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, came down against the deal when Sen. Schumer did.
A day before the President sent his letter to Nadler, another Democrat, Sen. Robert Menendez, came out publicly against the deal.