Pro-Israel orgs wary of Joe WH
With President-elect Joe Biden just weeks away from moving into the White House, Jewish and pro-Israel groups are racing to nail down many of the gains from the Trump era — and are planning to aggressively lobby the new administration against any reversals.
Most of all, leading US-Israel machers are looking to keep the US out of a new deal with Iran or, short of that — influence a future deal that corrects what they say were many of the mistakes of the original.
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal was formally known, was one of the signature foreign-policy actions of the Obama-Biden era. Proponents said it curbed Iranian nuclear ambitions, but critics have long accused it of being a giveaway.
Trump pulled the US out of the pact in 2018 and moved aggressively against Iran, reimposing past sanctions and even assassinating terror boss Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
“We were not opposed to any deal with Iran,” David Harris, CEO of the nonpartisan American
Jewish Committee, told The Post.
“We were opposed to a deal which we thought showed US desperation for a deal and played a strong hand weakly,” he said.
Biden has vowed to rejoin the Iran deal, although developments since Trump’s withdrawal have made a return considerably more difficult, including Friday’s assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, widely suspected of being an Israeli hit.
Meanwhile, pro-Israel groups are eyeing Biden’s picks for Cabinet positions and other jobs.
One staffer that has raised red flags is Reema Dodin, Biden’s pick as deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, who justified Palestinian suicide bombings while a student at Berkeley, saying they were “the last resort of a desperate people.” Another, Karine JeanPierre, a contender for press secretary, applauded Democratic candidates last year for skipping the historically bipartisan conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Com
mittee.