Pelosi says Iran deal has the votes, and Podhoretz urges Israel to attack Iran

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is “confident” that the House would be able to uphold the president’s veto of a potential Republican-backed bill to kill the deal.

“More and more of them have confirmed to me that they will be there to sustain the veto,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference, referring to members of the Democratic caucus. “They’ve done this not blindly but thoroughly,” as they examined the agreement over recent weeks.

Writes a friend:

Expect kabuki.

House votes as it feels.

Senate beats up on Obama.

House sustains veto. It’s over.

Israelis are waking up to their abandonment by the majority of US Jewry. Sort of the anti-67 War. Haaretz says the lobby is in crisis. Boldface mine:

Israel’s consul general in Philadelphia, Yaron Sideman, warned Jerusalem this week that the American Jewish community is divided over the nuclear agreement with Iran, and does not stand united behind Israel in the controversy.

The problem is that Israel has burned up its influence over the White House, and US Jews don’t want to be exposed as Israel supporters:

a CEO of one of the Jewish federations in the Philadelphia region told [Sideman] that in his view, Israel’s status vis-à-vis the Obama administration is at a low point, which could adversely affect the Jewish community.

He cited the Jewish leader telling him, “In the next year and a half (until the end of President Barack Obama’s term) Israel’s and the Jewish communities’ maneuvering space regarding advancing Israel’s interests is extremely limited to non existent.”

Even those who oppose the deal are reluctant to come forward because they will be seen to be advancing Israel’s interest over the U.S. interest. Nice play, Netanyahu.

The fear among major Jewish organizations that they will be drawn into the domestic U.S. political fray over the nuclear deal is prominent in statements released by both the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Both organizations have refrained from strongly attacking the nuclear agreement and defining it as a disaster, instead leading the public to believe that they instead have misgivings over large parts of the agreement, and that they hope that Congress will review it in depth. The U.S. Reform movement, too, issued a convoluted statement that fell short of taking a decisive stance on the agreement.

Norman Podhoretz has never had this problem. He became a neoconservative because he wanted a big U.S. military budget to support Israel. Now he sees the writing on the wall and calls for an Israeli attack on Iran, in Wall Street Journal:

I remain convinced that containment is impossible, from which it follows that the two choices before us are not war vs. containment but a conventional war now or a nuclear war later.

Given how very unlikely it is that President Obama, despite his all-options-on-the-table protestations to the contrary, would ever take military action, the only hope rests with Israel. If, then, Israel fails to strike now, Iran will get the bomb. And when it does, the Israelis will be forced to decide whether to wait for a nuclear attack and then to retaliate out of the rubble, or to pre-empt with a nuclear strike of their own. But the Iranians will be faced with the same dilemma. Under these unprecedentedly hair-trigger circumstances, it will take no time before one of them tries to beat the other to the punch.

And so my counsel to proponents of the new consensus is to consider the unspeakable horrors that would then be visited not just on Israel and Iran but on the entire region and beyond. The destruction would be far worse than any imaginable consequences of an Israeli conventional strike today when there is still a chance to put at least a temporary halt, and conceivably even a permanent one, to the relentless Iranian quest for the bomb

Oh and here is the ultimate chutzpah, right up there with killing your parents and asking for a light sentence because you’re an orphan. In a call to Israel supporters, Bret Stephens says that lawmakers should kill the Iran deal because if they support it, it will haunt them the same way voting for the Iraq war has haunted them. Stephens pushed that disastrous war. Oh and Stephens threatens their financial contributions, too. Glenn Greenwald has the clip:

Someone should say, “this is going to be like your vote for the Iraq War. This is going to come back to haunt you. Mark my words, it will come back to haunt you. Because as Iran cheats, as Iran becomes more powerful, and Iran will be both of those things, you will be held to account. This vote will be a stain. You will have to walk away from it at some point or another. You will have to explain it. And some of you may in fact lose your seats because of your vote for this deal. You’ll certainly lose a lot of financial support from some of your previous supporters.”

Another update. Grace Meng, Congresswoman representing Queens, has come out against the deal as “dangerous for the American people.” AIPAC links her announcement:

I believe the inspections procedures set forth are flawed – leading nuclear experts assert that… Finally, the immediate sanctions relief provided Iran in the deal would incentivize the funding of terrorism and lessen Iran’s interest in restraining its nuclear ambitions over the long term.

I commend President Obama and Secretary Kerry for their efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but the deal before us now is simply too dangerous for the American people. I have every confidence a better deal can be realized.

Peter Feld writes.

During 2012 election @RepGraceMeng attacked @POTUS: “could have been—and still can be—a greater friend to Israel.”

Scott Roth writes:

I’ll bet fifty bucks that @RepGraceMeng gets her marching orders from @RepSteveIsrael.

Here Meng is at a Stand By Israel rally during the Gaza war last summer talking about the “harrowing times” Israel is living through, and her visit to Sderot under rocket fire from Gaza. Not a word about Palestinian human rights. But she is very concerned about anti-Semitism globally.