Kabul on Edge After Wave of Attacks Kills 50
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- Russian TV Deserters Divulge Details On Kremlin’s Ukraine ‘Propaganda’
- U.S. 'Concerned' Quds Commander Visited Russia, Violating UN Ban
- U.S. Think Tank Questions Iran Explanation For Activity At Parchin
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- All Is Going According To Plan: Another worrisome aspect of the July 14 deal is that it does not compel Iran to comply. Moreover there are parts of the treaty that have not been released yet. The U.S. admits that there are two secret side deals that must remain secret. Meanwhile Iranian hardliners are openly calling on their government to, in effect, not comply with many aspects (especially inspections) of the treaty... There is already evidence that Iran does not plan to observe the July 14 treaty. The latest example is satellite photos made recently showing Iranian bulldozers and many workers at a military base (Parchin) that was long suspected of housing a nuclear research facility but that Iran never let UN (IAEA) inspectors into. One condition of the July 14 treaty is to let IAEA visit Parchin in mid-October. The facilities IAEA wants to inspect are now being destroyed or modified and much material is being removed. Parchin won’t be what is long was when IAEA shows up.
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Kabul on Edge After Wave of Attacks Kills 50by webdesk@voanews.com (William Gallo)
Kabul is on edge Saturday following one of its worst outbreaks of violence this year. Insurgents carried out a series of suicide bombings in and around the Afghan capital Friday that killed more than 50 people, including nine people at a U.S. military base. The civilian death toll is the highest the United Nations mission in the country has recorded for Kabul in a single day since 2009. U.N. mission chief Nicholas Haysom bluntly blamed the attackers for civilian...
Trump Disinvited From Conservative Eventby webdesk@voanews.com (Reuters)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was dumped from a prime speaking role to an important gathering of conservative activists for his criticism of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly after a combustible debate performance. Trump was scheduled to deliver the keynote address Saturday night at a conference in Atlanta organized by Red State, an influential conservative group. Red State chief Erick Erickson said he had disinvited Trump from the event because of what he described as...
Militants Suspected in Death of Bangladesh Bloggerby webdesk@voanews.com (Shaikh Azizur Rahman)
Suspected militants, armed with machetes and cleavers, entered an apartment building in Bangladesh's capital and hacked to death a secular blogger in the fourth such deadly attack this year, police said. Niloy Chakrabarti, 40, who was known for his atheist views, was killed at his home around noon Friday in the Dhaka neighborhood of Goran. “The men entered Niloy’s house, pushed aside his wife and a friend, and hacked him to death. Earlier this year they killed the three secular...
Billionaire Donald Trump remains the center of attention following the first Republican presidential debate that featured 10 of the 17 White House contenders. VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/trump-remains-spotlight-after-first-republican-debate/2907636.html
Another secular blogger in Bangladesh has been hacked to death in Dhaka. VOA's Satarupa Barua reports.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/secular-blogger-hacked-to-death-in-bangladesh/2908375.html
One year ago (on August 8, 2014), the United States started to bomb Islamic State targets in Iraq. Since then, the U.S.-led coalition has hit the militant group in Iraq and Syria with more than 6,000 air strikes. Even though the group has lost some territory, it has shown tough resilience and continues to pose a threat to vulnerable communities in the region, most recently in Turkish areas close to the Syrian border. VOA's Zlatica Hoke has this report.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/is-continuues-attacks-despite-6000-air-strikes/2908382.html
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Russian TV Deserters Divulge Details On Kremlin’s Ukraine ‘Propaganda’ by support@pangea-cms.com (Carl Schreck)
Former employees of Russia’s largest state-media holding have divulged behind-the-scenes details about what they portray as a Kremlin propaganda campaign to deliberately mislead and inflame television audiences with news coverage of the Ukraine conflict. The Russian culture website Colta.ru this week published tell-all accounts by two people about their time working at VGTRK, Russia’s main state broadcasting company, whose networks included the national Rossia-1 channel. They describe how Kremlin officials dictated to VGTRK management and editors how news events should be covered, including whether incendiary buzzwords to discredit Ukraine should be deployed on air. One source said weather reports were even used for propaganda purposes after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea territory in March 2014 and the ensuing war between Kyiv’s forces and Russian-backed separatists that the UN says has killed more than 6,400 people. The August 6 report by Colta.ru did not identify the two sources by name. Their testimony was gathered by Aleksandr Orlov, a former deputy editor in chief with VGTRK’s 24-hour news network, Rossia-24. Orlov, who says he was fired two years ago for his support of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, is currently writing a book about Russian television. ‘Welcome To The Club’ According to one former VGTRK employee, a top editor mobilized his underlings for a confrontation with the West at a staff meeting in February 2014. That month, street protests in Kyiv led to the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a Kremlin ally, and ushered in a pro-Western government. “The editor in chief said that a ‘Cold War’ is starting,” the source told Orlov. “...He said it was the beginning of an era that would make the 1970s and 1980s look like child’s play. So those who didn’t want to participate can go find something in another line of work.... Everyone else: welcome to the club.” Senior managers would go in for meetings at the Kremlin to discuss a news coverage strategy, which would then filter down the editorial chain, the former employee said. After Russia seized Crimea, “no less than one story a day” was required about how the peninsula was thriving. While Russian state television regularly portrayed Ukraine’s post-Yanukovych leadership as a “junta” and its supporters as “fascists” and “Banderovtsy” (Ukrainian ultranationalists), the Kremlin also purportedly reined in the rhetoric due to political developments. The ex-employee said that after Ukrainian officials and Russian-backed rebels agreed to an initial cease-fire in September 2014, those three pejoratives were banned from use in coverage of the conflict. A study by the media monitoring website Medialogia partially corroborates this claim. Results of the study showed that the word junta disappeared from news coverage by Russia’s six leading television networks shortly before and for nine days after the cease-fire deal was signed. A cursory search for the words “fascists” and “Banderovtsy” on VGTRK’s main news site reveals a sharp drop in their use vis-a-vis Ukraine around the time of the cease-fire. They reappeared regularly in mid-September, when the cease-fire collapsed and the United States and the EU expanded sanctions against Russia. “The situation rolled back and everything started anew,” the interview subject told Orlov. Guidance And Forecasts A second former employee in VGTRK’s news broadcast operations told Orlov that the editors would convene in the Kremlin every Friday at noon and return with a centimeter-high stack of papers spelling out what to cover and how, as well as “who the best experts are to invite.” “They brought me some of the sheets of paper from this file, and I worked according to them,” the source said. The source added that the editor in chief had the freedom to decide whether or not to air a segment about “some car accident outside Moscow,” but that “where big politics are concerned, war and peace, he has no freedom.” The second source also told Orlov that the bosses pushed to have the weather prognoses sound ominous for Ukraine as winter approached last year. Ukraine relies heavily on Russian gas supplies, which Moscow has halted in the past over pricing disputes. “The general trend was to stoke fear: that they depend onus but we’re not going to send [Ukraine] gas and you’ll all freeze,” the source said. ‘Nowhere Else To Go’ The accounts from Orlov's sources largely jibe with other descriptions of the inner workings of Russia’s state media machine given by journalists who say they quit or were fired after becoming disillusioned with their jobs. In June, Konstantin Goldentsvaig, a Berlin-based correspondent with Kremlin-allied NTV television, said he was released from his contract early after he gave an interview to German television in which he called Russian President Vladimir Putin “cynical.” In a Facebook post, Goldentsvaig asked for forgiveness for participating in "collective propaganda madness." The first source told Orlov that many former colleagues are not devoted to the Kremlin’s media mission. Between 40 and 50 percent of them attended antigovernment protests in Moscow in 2011-12, the source estimated, even though the bosses “categorically forbade this.” "But they didn’t quit," the former VGTRK employee told Orlov. "The reasons were banal: families, loans. Plus, everyone understood that there was nowhere else to go."
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U.S. 'Concerned' Quds Commander Visited Russia, Violating UN Ban by support@pangea-cms.com (RFE/RL)
The United States is investigating reports that the commander of the elite Quds Force in Iran's Revolutionary Guard recently visited Russia in violation of a United Nations travel ban, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said August 7.
A U.S. think-tank has questioned Iran's explanation for activity at its Parchin military site, where the United States and Israel suspect Tehran experimented with developing nuclear weapons.
An aquarium in the U.S. state of Georgia wants a judge to overturn a federal agency's denial of a permit to import 18 beluga whales from Russia for display in the United States.
Fears of Lasting Rift as Obama Battles Pro-Israel Group on Iranby JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
The president accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of spending millions on advertising to try to defeat the accord, as well as spreading misinformation about it.
Dozens of Syrian Christians Missing From Town Attacked by ISIS by BEN HUBBARD and HWAIDA SAAD
Contact with the Christians was lost after the jihadists attacked the isolated oasis town of Qariyatain in Homs Province and routed the Syrian Army.
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A Russian-owned luxury jewellery brand is selling a $3,000 customised Apple Watch featuring the signature of the Russian president. Report by Conor Mcnally.
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A prominent U.S. think tank on Friday questioned Iran's explanation for activity at its Parchin military site visible in satellite imagery, saying the movement of vehicles did not appear related to road work.
(Reuters) - A former Soviet army officer accused of being a Taliban fighter was found guilty on all counts on Friday by a federal jury in Richmond, Virginia, a court official said.
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DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's foreign minister said on Saturday that accusations about activity at its Parchin military site were "lies" spread by opponents of its landmark nuclear deal with world powers clinched last month.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - The leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish party called on Saturday for the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to "remove its finger from the trigger" and for the government to halt a surge in violence by launching talks.
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SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Manuel Contreras, who led Chile's now-defunct and much feared secret police force for several years under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, died on Friday evening at the age of 86.
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Taliban claims responsibility for deadly attack on military base in Afghan capital of Kabul
August 8, 2015: Officially the Arab Gulf states are supporting the new peace deal with Iran, despite the threat of Iran getting out from under sanctions and continuing to develop its nuclear weapons. Arab public opinion is another matter and is largely hostile to the July 14 th agreement. Turkey has always had a chilly relationship with Iran as the two nations have been rivals for over a thousand years. One thing Turkey, Iran and the Arabs can agree on is the need to cooperate in fighting ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), which is a threat to all of them.
Another worrisome aspect of the July 14 deal is that it does not compel Iran to comply. Moreover there are parts of the treaty that have not been released yet. The U.S. admits that there are two secret side deals that must remain secret. Meanwhile Iranian hardliners are openly calling on their government to, in effect, not comply with many aspects (especially inspections) of the treaty.
Saudi Arabia and the other Arab oil states take some comfort in the fact that they do retain some real leverage over Iran. The world price of oil is still under $50 a barrel and the Arab oil states can keep it there for a long time. While the lifting of sanctions will bring Iran some financial relief, their major money problem is the low price of oil, less than half of what it was in 2013. The deal with the oil weapon Iran will have to negotiate, as least as long as they don’t have nukes.
Critics of the new treaty point out that two similar, and recent, deals failed. The 1994 deal with North Korea was simply ignored by the North Koreans who went on to create their primitive but very real nukes. A few years before that there was a deal with Iraq, which had an even more peculiar outcome. Saddam Hussein admitted, after he was captured, that he had shut down his “weapons of mass destruction” programs in the 1990s (because of the expense) but kept that secret from the outside world and all but a few Iraqis. He wanted the Iranians to believe that Iraq was still actively working on nuclear and chemical weapons. To make the deception convincing he ordered that UN inspectors be deceived and interfered with at every opportunity. Some UN inspectors believed that, despite what the rest of the world (including most major intel agencies) believed the Iraqi nuclear and chemical weapons programs were just not there anymore. It wasn’t until after the 2003 invasion and the capture of Saddam that the truth was known. Saddam also revealed that he had made sue to keep key personnel and technical knowledge safely hidden away and ready to get back to work once sanctions were lifted. Gulf Arabs understand that Saddam’s deception was not a unique event but a common tactic in the region and one that Iran will surely adopt in some form. The treaty also ignored issues like Americans and other Westerners held prisoner in Iran and so on. These items were left out at the insistence of the Iranians who took advantage of the fact that many Western leaders, especially the Americans, were eager to have a deal and willing to give in on many “non-essential” Iranian demands. The sanctions have been costly to the West in terms of lost sales and the local jobs that creates. European nations supporting the sanctions need the jobs renewed trade with Iran would provide. Israel and the Gulf Arabs accuse the Europeans of being hypocrites about this angle, even as those same Europeans keep calling to sell stuff to oil-rich Arab states.
There is already evidence that Iran does not plan to observe the July 14 treaty. The latest example is satellite photos made recently showing Iranian bulldozers and many workers at a military base (Parchin) that was long suspected of housing a nuclear research facility but that Iran never let UN (IAEA) inspectors into. One condition of the July 14 treaty is to let IAEA visit Parchin in mid-October. The facilities IAEA wants to inspect are now being destroyed or modified and much material is being removed. Parchin won’t be what is long was when IAEA shows up.
The deal is supposed to be approved (or not) by early 2016 but in several of the nations involved, especially the United States, the majority of voters oppose the deal. Israel and the Arab Gulf states were also not part of the negotiations but have the most to fear from a more powerful Iran. Israel is openly opposed to the deal while Arab public opinion is also opposed. But many Arab governments find it prudent to pretend to approve until the ratification process is complete. Meanwhile the average Iranian, including the much oppressed pro-reform groups, see the treaty as a great victory and make no secret that they approve of Iran being more powerful and influential in the region. The Iranian attitude is well known to the Gulf Arabs, who have had to live with an Iranian threat for thousands of years.
The new treaty will help Iranian military efforts in Syria and Iraq, as more cash and fewer import restrictions means it is easier to get modern weapons and military gear. However, all this won’t do much for Iran in Yemen, mainly because there is still a blockade (by Arab and Western warships and warplanes) around Yemen. The Saudis and their Arab allies have managed to put the Iran backed Shia rebels on the defensive. This was most visible recently as hundreds of Yemeni troops, trained in Saudi Arabia and given new weapons, were seen crossing the Saudi border into northern Yemen. These troops were in armored vehicles supplied by the Saudis and continue to have air support from the Saudi led Arab coalition. Iran feels humiliated and won’t forget.
Meanwhile AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) is openly allied with some of the Sunni tribal militias in eastern Yemen and this makes it possible for the Islamic terrorists to regularly carry out suicide bombing attacks in the capital and even in the far north homeland of the Iran-backed Shia tribes. AQAP and pro-government tribesmen have also been assassinating Shia troops and low-ranking leaders in the capital and even firing on checkpoints throughout the capital. ISIL Islamic terrorists also take credit for some of the attacks in the capital. ISIL and AQAP are technically at war with each other but that seems to have been put aside for the moment because of the Shia threat and the open involvement of Shia Iran. These Sunni Islamic terrorists are particularly eager to take any Iranian operatives alive. Because of this de facto Islamic terrorist help against the Shia rebels the counter-terrorism efforts by government forces (mostly in disarray anyway) and various Sunni tribal militias (who outnumber the Shia but are not united and often at odds with each other) has largely lapsed. The only ones fighting the Sunni Islamic terrorists are the Iran-backed Shia rebels and the Americans. Despite all this an anti-Shia coalition has formed and grown stronger.
August 6, 2015: The government denies a claim by Kurdish separatists (PJAK) that the Kurds killed 20 IRGC soldiers during an attack earlier today on a border post in the northwest. PJAK said this was payback for Iranian failure to observe the 2011 ceasefire and for their continued persecution of Kurds suspected of disloyalty. Iran admits there was an attack, but that it was repulsed with no IRGC losses. Iran does not allow foreign reporters into this largely Kurdish area and it has always been difficult to confirm any claims. What is proven is that the Kurd violence up there is real and has been going on for decades. Unable to suppress the armed Kurds in the area Iran has been pressuring European nations (where the exiled PJAK leadership resides) to prosecute the rebels in exile. After decades of pressure Iran has obtained some cooperation from foreign governments (in Europe, as well as Turkey and Syria, where most Kurds live) to arrest, or at least monitor, PJAK members. Iraq pretends to cooperate, but doesn't do much. Iranian secret police agents also have informants in these other Kurdish communities, to monitor PJAK activities, and provide targets for Iranian death squads, which still stalk PJAK members who are deemed too troublesome to tolerate. Iran has to be careful with overseas "wet work" (assassinations), as without permission from the local government, this sort of thing invites diplomatic retaliation. There are no such problem inside Iran, and in northwest Iran, where most of the Kurdish minority lives, Iranian secret police and Revolutionary Guards have long maintained a reign of terror, to smoke out PJAK members and discourage Kurds from cooperating with the rebels. That kind of effort often just helps PJAK, which only has a few thousand armed members (out of 12 million Kurds in Iran).
August 5, 2015: Iran announced that it is preparing a new peace proposal for Syria. This will apparently incorporate Russian suggestions that the Assads be eased out (and into comfortable exile) and the growing anti-ISIL forces in Syria unite, if only temporarily, to deal with the common threat. This will be a hard sell because many rebel factions in Syria hate Iran in particular and Shia in general.
August 1, 2015: A previously unknown hacker group, the YCA (Yemen Cyber Army) took credit for the hacks that obtained the trove of Saudi Arabian government emails the group recently released. The main thing the emails revealed was that Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Arab countries use their money as a tool to influence political and diplomatic decisions in the Middle East and worldwide. These revelation were not surprising, but some of the details were. The emails show that the Saudis continue to support Islamic terror groups, even though many of these same groups want to seize control of Saudi Arabia and establish a religious dictatorship (and execute every member of the House of Saud they can grab along the way). The Saudis are looking at the big picture and the perceived greater danger posed by Shia Iran, which wants an Iranian Shia clergy controlling the holy places in Saudi Arabia. In this scenario Iran would also control the Saudi oil as well. This is the ultimate Saudi nightmare and they are trying to buy and bribe their way out of it. That, however, won’t make their past activity disappear. It also appears that Iran and Russia were behind this hack because the Iran backed Shia rebels in Yemen do not have the technical resources to crack the formidable network defenses the Saudis are known to have built. In fact, not all departments of the Saudi government appear to have been hacked. This is indicative of the high-end defenses the Saudis have bought, which isolates different bureaucracies networks so hacking one does not get you into all the others.
July 27, 2015: In the northwest a natural gas pipeline to Turkey was badly damaged by Kurdish separatists (PKK) just across the border in Turkey (about 15 kilometers from the border). The explosives put a hole in the pipeline and forced gas flow to be shut off for several days until repairs could be made. Various rebellious groups, like Sunni Baluchi tribesmen in the southeast and Iranian Arabs in the west threaten other pipeline projects underway to send natural gas to Iraq and Pakistan.
July 25, 2015: Bahrain has recalled its ambassador in Iran because of a recent (July 15th) incident where a small boat was stopped off Bahrain and two men with known terrorist connections were arrested after the boat was found to be carrying 44 kg (96 pounds) of C4 explosive, other components (detonators) for making bombs, six assault rifles and several hundred rounds of ammo. The men admitted they had received the weapons from a nearby Iranian ship in international waters. One of the men was known to have received terrorist training in Iran in 2013. Iran dismissed the accusations. This is not an isolated incident. In June Bahrain arrested several Islamic terrorists and seized supplies of explosives meant for terrorist bombings in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Iran was blamed for this and Bahrain said Quds Force was responsible for the explosives getting in. This sort of thing has been going on for some time. Over the last few years Iranian politicians have increasingly mentioned in public that Bahrain is really the 14th province of Iran. That's because, well, it isn't called the "Persian" Gulf for nothing (although since all the oil money showed up the Arabs have been trying to popularize the term "Arabian Gulf," with mixed success). There have been ethnic Iranian communities in Bahrain for centuries, along with a Shia Arab majority, and Iran had a formal claim on the island until 1969 when the claim was dropped, in order to improve relations with Arab neighbors. Iran has always been an empire and still is (only half the population is ethnic Iranian). The way this works you always have a sense of "Greater Iran" which includes, at the least, claims on any nearby areas containing ethnic Iranians or people of similar religion. Hitler used this concept to guide his strategy during World War II. Bahrainis (both Sunni and Shia) get very upset when these claims are periodically revived. The local Shia want an independent Bahrain run by the Shia majority. The Iranian government officially denounces such claims on Bahrain but apparently many Iranians have not forgotten. Arabs are not very happy about that and have responded by pointing out that Iran was Sunni until 500 years ago and were forced to convert, on pain of death, by a Shia emperor (who killed about a million of his subjects in the process). Saudi Arabia is trying, with some success, to organize Arab resistance to Iranian expansionist moves. Iran has responded by encouraging the Shia minorities on the west side of the Gulf to demonstrate their unhappiness with their minority status. The Iranian claim is based on Iranian control of Bahrain for a few years during the 18th century. Iran resents Western interference in the area believing themselves to be the regional superpower and the final arbiter of who is sovereign and who is not. Arabs see Iran continuing to throw its traditional weight around, despite the decades of sanctions and the current low oil prices. Traditional thinking among Sunnis is that Shia are scum and a bunch of unreliable losers, although the Iranians have always visibly contradicted that. The average Iranian holds similar views towards Arabs, especially Sunni Arabs.
July 24, 2015: Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani flew into Moscow to meet with Russian defense officials. He left two days later. Since 2007 Soleimani has been under numerous sanctions, including ones that are not being lifted by the July 14th deal. Soleimani was not supposed to be able to travel to Russia and Russia knows it. But Russia and Iran deny the visit actually happened, the same way Iran denies that Soleimani has spent time in Iraq supervising the creation and use of pro-Iran Shia militias.
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WASHINGTON — President Obama had a tough message for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, the powerful pro-Israel group that is furiously campaigning against the Iran nuclear accord, when he met with two of its leaders at the White House this week. The president accused Aipac of spending millions of dollars in advertising against the deal and spreading false claims about it, people in the meeting recalled.
So Mr. Obama told the Aipac leaders that he intended to hit back hard.
The next day in a speech at American University, Mr. Obama denounced the deal’s opponents as “lobbyists” doling out millions of dollars to trumpet the same hawkish rhetoric that had led the United States into war with Iraq. The president never mentioned Aipac by name, but his target was unmistakable.
The remarks reflected an unusually sharp rupture between a sitting American president and the most potent pro-Israel lobbying group, which was founded in 1951 a few years after the birth of Israel.
In a speech at American University on Wednesday, President Obama denounced opponents of the Iran deal as “lobbyists.”
Stephen Crowley / The New York Times
Ronald Reagan opposed Aipac when he defied Israeli objections over the sale of Awacs reconnaissance planes to Saudi Arabia in 1981. A decade later, George H. W. Bush took on the group during a fight over housing loan guarantees for Israel, saying he was just “one lonely little guy” going up against a thousand lobbyists on Capitol Hill.
But the tone of the current dispute is raising concerns among some of Mr. Obama’s allies who say it is a new low in relations between Aipac and the White House. They say they are worried that, in working to counter Aipac’s tactics and discredit its claims about the nuclear accord with Iran, the president has gone overboard in criticizing the group and like-minded opponents of the deal.
“It’s somewhat dangerous, because there’s a kind of a dog whistle here that some people are going to hear as ‘it’s time to go after people,’ and not just rhetorically,” said David Makovsky, a former Middle East adviser for the Obama administration and now an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. But Aipac’s claims, he said, had been just as overheated. “There’s almost a bunker mentality on both sides.”
Mr. Obama’s advisers strongly disputed the suggestion that he used coded language to single out Aipac when he said in his American University speech that “many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal.”
“This has nothing to do with anybody’s identity; this is a policy difference about the Iranian nuclear program,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “We don’t see this as us versus them,” Mr. Rhodes added, predicting that the White House and Aipac would work closely in the future on other matters, including Israeli security. “This is a family argument, not a permanent rupture.”
But for now, the struggle is critical for Mr. Obama, who regards the agreement — which lifts some sanctions against Iran in exchange for restrictions aimed at restraining its ability to obtain a nuclear weapon — as a landmark achievement. He is fighting to rally enough Democratic support to preserve the deal ahead of a September vote on it in the Republican-led Congress. Aipac is working to deny him that by leaning hard on Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who on Thursday announced his opposition.
The group had sent 60 activists to Mr. Schumer’s office to lobby him last week, while Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, an offshoot Aipac formed to run at least $25 million in advertising against the deal, ran television spots in New York City. As Mr. Schumer deliberated, he spoke with Aipac leaders, but also with representatives of the pro-Israel group J Street, which supports the deal.
The White House courted Mr. Schumer heavily even though officials always suspected he would oppose the agreement, they said Friday. “I don’t know if the administration’s been outlobbied,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Thursday before Mr. Schumer’s announcement. “We certainly have been outspent.”
Besides individual meetings with Mr. Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Wendy R. Sherman, the chief negotiator, Mr. Schumer had three hourlong meetings with members of the negotiating team, who answered 14 pages of questions from him.
Mr. Schumer hashed out further details with Mr. Kerry, Ms. Sherman and Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz in a recent dinner at the State Department. Mr. Obama, in the White House meeting with Aipac leaders, sharply challenged the group after one of its representatives, Lee Rosenberg, a former fund-raising bundler for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, said the administration was characterizing opponents of the deal as warmongers, according to several people present, who would speak about the private meeting only on the condition of anonymity. The meeting included some 20 leaders of other Jewish organizations.
“Words have consequences, especially when it’s authority figures saying them, and it’s not their intent, perhaps, but we know from history that they become manipulated,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, repeating a concern he had raised directly with Mr. Obama during the closed-door session. “Of all political leaders,” Mr. Hoenlein added, “he certainly should be the most sensitive to this.”
Mr. Obama told the visitors he would be careful with his remarks, but quickly pointed out that Aipac was spending $20 million to campaign against the agreement and was sending hundreds of activists to Capitol Hill armed with what he called inaccuracies to persuade lawmakers to reject the deal. He complained about advertising that portrayed him as an appeaser by comparing him to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938.
Aipac says it is not behind those ads, and that its arguments with Mr. Obama are about the deal, not him. And the group denies it lobbied for the war in Iraq, on which it did not take an official position. “This critical national security debate is certainly not about an organization but rather about a deal which we believe will fail to block an Iranian nuclear weapon and will fuel terrorism,” said Marshall Wittmann, an Aipac spokesman. “We hope that all those who are engaged in this debate will avoid questioning motives and employing any ad hominem attacks.”
The friction between Mr. Obama and Aipac over the Iran deal has been building for months. Last week, as Mr. Obama made his way back from Africa on Air Force One, White House officials learned that Aipac would be flying 700 members from across the country to Washington to pressure their members of Congress to reject the deal. Mr. Obama’s team asked to brief the group at the White House, and was told instead to send a representative to the downtown Washington hotel where the activists were gathering before their Capitol Hill visits, according to people familiar with the private discussions.
Ms. Sherman; Adam J. Szubin, the Treasury official who handles financial sanctions; and Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, all made presentations to the group, but were barred from taking questions to further explain it. White House officials said they were told from the start there would be no questions, while Aipac supporters said that they would have allowed questions but that there was no time.
Whatever the case, Mr. Obama took offense and later complained at the White House to Aipac leaders that they had refused to allow Ms. Sherman and other members of his team to confront the “inaccuracies” being spread about the agreement, leaving him to defend the deal to wavering lawmakers who had been fed misinformation about it.
“You couldn’t miss the message that he was sending,” one person seated at the table said, “of, ‘That’s not O.K. with me, and it will be answered.’ ”
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