A major rally opposing President Obama’s disastrous Iran nuclear deal, co-sponsored by the Tea Party, the Center for Security Policy and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) attracted over 5,000 people despite the extreme heat, and was addressed by Republican presidential candidates Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, Center for Security Policy’s Frank J. Gaffney, former CIA Director under the Clinton Administration R. James Woolsey, former Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, former Alaska Governor and Republic Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, radio talk show host Mark Levin, TV and radio talk show host Glenn Beck and ZOA National President Morton A. Klein. (Numerous Congressional Democrats were invite to speak, but they either declined or did not return phone calls.
A host of others, including Members of Congress, also addressed the rally, calling upon Congress to reject the deal concluded with Iran by President Barack Obama, which leaves Iran with all the elements of its nuclear weapons program intact, while providing Iran with a pathway to nuclear weapons in perhaps as little as ten years, as well as $150 billion in unfrozen assets and tens of billions of dollars annually in sanctions relief.
Senator Cruz told the crowd that this nuclear deal and the massive enrichment of Iran which it will precipitate makes the deal “catastrophic” and warning that it would make the Obama administration “quite literally the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism … If this deal goes through, we know to an absolute certainty people will die. Americans will die; Israelis will die; Europeans will die … [this agreement] is the single greatest national security threat facing America.”
Mr. Trump said of the deal that “We cannot let it continue … It’s the end of the world as we know it.”
Mr. Levin said that “Never before has a President of the United States, never before has a political party consented to funding and arming the enemy. Never before has a President entered into agreements with a terrorist regime that holds American hostages; that has killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers, and that seeks nuclear weapons and ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) to attack his own country… This phony deal allows the Iranian terrorist regime to inspect its own nuclear sites; to continue uranium enrichment; to build advanced centrifuges; to perfect their ICBMS; to spend $150 billion dollars on terrorism, and in the end, to secure nuclear warheads … The Republican Party … can invoke the Treaty Clause right now. They can suspend the filibuster rule and vote against lifting sanctions right now. They can stand between Obama and the Iranian terrorist regime and protect our nation and our allies.”
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein told the rally, “As a child of Holocaust survivors, born in a displaced persons camp in Germany, I’m often asked, ‘How could we have allowed this to happen?’ Well, we see the same thing occurring today where we are empowering and enriching Iran, the Nazi Germany of our time, and ignoring what they say and what they do. Iran could now have nuclear weapons in ten years, perhaps less, and many more conventional weapons in a few years.
“I’ve been told from many quarters that the White House has placed tremendous pressure of Democrats not to cross the President on this Iran deal. Member of Congress, we have been told, have been threatened that, if they oppose this agreement, there will be an end to federal funding for their districts, no national money for races – that opponents will be run against them in primaries and that their activities and finances will be put under investigation. This might explain why many have not come around to opposing this terrible deal, which is strongly opposed by the majority of the American people. We now have a substantial minority of Congress supporting a deal that arms and funds the terrorist regime in Iran.
Klein went on to discuss why President Obama has sought and promoted this nuclear deal. “Why would President Obama promote such a terrible deal? Well, let’s look at his record in relation to radical Islam. We saw President Obama not protesting when Iranians rose up against Ahmadinejad, but who called for Hosni Mubarak, a U.S. ally, to step down in face of demonstrations and let the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt. Why did President Obama refuse to attend the four-million strong anti-Islamic terrorism rallies in France after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo offices and the Jewish supermarket? Why has President Obama refused to even utter the term ‘Islamic terrorist’ or ‘jihadist terrorist’? Instead, he uses terms like ‘violent extremism’ or “workplace violence.’ Why did President Obama invite leaders and members of the major Islamic terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, to his first major speech on the Middle East at a university in Cairo? Why did President Obama release five top Islamic terrorist leaders of the Taliban from Guantanamo in return for one U.S. deserter? Why did President Obama fight against additional sanctions on the Islamic terrorist regime of Iran each time they were proposed in Congress?
“This is not a matter of President Obama being naive, incompetent or a poor negotiator. As the late scientist, Linus Pauling, twice the recipient of the Nobel Prize, once said to me when we worked together, ‘Mort, what does the evidence require us to believe?’ Very painfully, I must now ask — What does President Obama’s record require us to believe? It requires us to understand that he is sympathetic to radical Islam.”
(Earlier this year, Klein published an opinion piece, ‘Obama’s track record on radical Islam,’ which lists numerous examples of President Obama supporting, or failing to confront, name, or oppose radical Islam. The ZOA also issued a press release listing 33 such examples).