J Street has drawn a line in the sand: you’re either with the President or against him. There’s only one problem. J Street, accidentally one imagines, have put themselves in the against him camp. Ami Eden has the story at JTA, where he notes a statement the pro-peace, pro-Palestinian group put out today in response to a bipartisan push for tougher sanctions on Iran, specifically a bill introduced in the House today by Reps. Sherman and Kirk:
As Eden says, “The only thing Orwellian here is J Street’s implication that lawmakers are undercutting the Obama administration by pushing for sanctions.” Indeed, President Obama has been clear that he favors tougher sanctions on Iran in conjunction with direct diplomacy. Further, similar legislation (which we’ve covered here and here) has been introduced in the Senate with a long list of Democratic co-sponsors including Senators Bayh, Lieberman, Boxer, Cardin, Feingold, Klobuchar, Landrieu, Menendez, Mikulski, Murray, Schumer, Stabenow, and Wyden. That bill (referred to as Bayh-Kyl) empowers the president to impose sanctions on anyone helping Iran import refined petroleum products. That legislation will be mirrored in the House by a bill that’s likely to be introduced this afternoon by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Berman and Ranking-member Ros-Lehtinen and which will incorperate the Sherman-Kirk legislation. Does J Street mean to imply that all these Democrats are “directly undercutting the President’s diplomatic message.” Apparently so. The legislators are described in J Street’s email as the president’s “opponents,” who “are trying to rally Congress to thwart his agenda.” Except the White House does not oppose this legislation. Neither does the State Department. The only group that does oppose this legislation is J Street, which at this point would be indistinguishable from an arm of the Iran Lobby if one existed. As Ami Eden sees it, “J Street is the one undermining Obama’s Iran policy.”
