US Jewish leaders said they “had a constructive and open exchange,” at the White House with Administration officials over efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.
The meeting was arranged at the last minute. In a joint a joint statement issued after the meeting by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the sides agreed “to continue the consultation to enhance the prospect of achieving a transparent and effective diplomatic resolution.”
The participants in the off the record discussion included leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), all organizations that had challenged the administration’s policies on Iran.
AIPAC, for instance, has been lobbying hard for a new sanctions bill that is supposed to go to a vote in the Senate soon, and which the Obama administration has indicated it does not want to see advanced in an effort, it said, to give time for diplomacy with Iran to work.
The carefully worded statement made no reference to the current public points of disagreement between the United States and Israel over both the approach, and the desired outcome of the ongoing nuclear talks between six world powers and Iran known as the P5+1.
On Sunday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed discussion over how far Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium, and insisted that Iran be denied nuclear breakout capability.
“Iran is willing to give up on enriching uranium to 20% and therefore a discussion on this issue is unimportant. The importance of the issue became superfluous in the wake of the technological improvements that allow Iran to enrich uranium from 3.5% to 90% in a number of weeks. Pressure on Iran should be increased because it is continuing enrichment even as it negotiates,” he said.
On Monday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that “the US would not ‘succumb to fear tactics,’ of those who oppose diplomacy,” with Iran, the Jerusalem Post reported. The paper said that the remarks “could be construed as a reference to Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings to the world not to fall for the ‘charm offensive’ of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.”
On Saturday, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz told an audience at Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue that the US and Israel disagree when it comes to Iran, both with regard to negotiation tactics and in what they would be prepared to accept as a bottom line outcome of negotiations.
While the Obama administration has lobbied Congress to hold back on new sanctions legislation in recent days in an effort, it said, to give time for diplomacy with Iran to work, a number of Jewish groups have voiced support for the implementation of new sanctions.
In an address on Monday to the Ploughshares Fund, a group that advocates nuclear disarmament, said “the president has welcomed an opportunity to try to put to the test whether or not Iran really desires to pursue only a peaceful program, and will submit to the standards of the international community in the effort to prove that to the world.’’
“Some have suggested that somehow there’s something wrong with even putting that to the test,” Kerry said. “I suggest that the idea that the United States of America is a responsible nation to all of humankind would not explore that possibility would be the height of irresponsibility and dangerous in itself, and we will not succumb to those fear tactics and forces that suggest otherwise.”