Obama Brings Jewish Groups to White House to Lobby for Iran Deal

President Obama personally lobbied several Jewish groups at the White House yesterday to support the Iran nuclear deal — groups that have already been lobbying for and against him.

The meeting in the Cabinet room Tuesday precedes Obama’s speech pitching the Iran deal today at American University.

According to the White House, Obama “met with American Jewish community leaders to discuss the deal with Iran – reached along with our international partners – that would verifiably prevent and prohibit Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

“This meeting was the latest in a series that the president and senior administration officials have held with the Jewish community to underscore the importance of this historic deal and highlight the administration’s continued and unprecedented support for our ally, Israel,” the White House said.

Participants included Lee Rosenberg and Michael Kassen of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is engaged in an aggressive lobbying campaign against the deal.

The meeting obviously didn’t sway them, as AIPAC released a memo this morning showing that “major U.S. polls have overwhelmingly found that Americans are increasingly skeptical of the nuclear deal.”

Also in the room were Jeremy Ben-Ami and Alexandra Stanton of J Street, which is aggressively lobbying for the deal.

Other participants were:

·         Kenneth Bob, AmeinuJason Isaacson, American Jewish Committee

·         Marvin Nathan, Anti-Defamation League

·         Steve Greenberg, Conference of Presidents

·         Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents

·         Jerry Silverman, Jewish Federations of North America

·         Susan Turnbull, Jewish Council for Public Affairs

·         Greg Rosenbaum, National Jewish Democratic Council

·         Nathan Diament, Orthodox Union

·         Rabbi William Gershon, Rabbinical Assembly

·         Rabbi Jonah Pesner, Reform Movement

·         The Honorable Robert Wexler, S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace

·         John Ruskay, S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace

·         Alisa Doctoroff, UJA-Federation of New York

·         Robert Singer, World Jewish Congress

·         Alan Solow, Chicago community leader

·         Gary Torgow, Michigan community leader

·         Andrew Weinstein, South Florida community leader

·         Fredrick Schaufeld, Washington, D.C. community leader

Notably absent were many of the groups that protested against the deal in Times Square, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Zionist Organization of America, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s The World Values Network.