ZOA Condemns Senate Vote Blocking Debate/Vote on Iran Deal
News Press Release
September 16, 2015

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned yesterday’s Senate vote, which failed to stop President Barack Obama’s catastrophic and frightening Iran nuclear deal, despite the fact that a majority of the Senate opposes it. Senate Democrats blocked a resolution of disapproval of the deal going to a final vote by a vote of 58-42. The resolution required 60 votes, not a simple majority, in order to pass. As a result, President Obama will not need to exercise his veto to prevail on the matter for now.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “This is a truly dark day for America, Israel and the world. Our future security now may well be mortgaged to this terrible nuclear deal which, as the ZOA has elaborated in detail, does not dismantle a single element of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, grants Iran a pathway to nuclear weapons in ten years and tremendously enriches Iran with $150 billion in unfrozen assets and tens of billions of dollars annually with which fund its nuclear program, arm and its terrorist proxies across the Middle East and around the globe and give tens of thousands of new missiles to Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza in order to attack Israel.

This vote has just made America less safe, Israel less safe and the world less safe.

“This deal is so patently bad — Iran to provide its own soil samples for inspections; inspections of suspected sites not to occur except after a process taking at least 24 days; Iranian military sites to be exempt from inspections; the Europeans to protect the Iranian nuclear program from future sabotage; new commercial contracts with Iran to be immune to renewed sanctions in the event of Iranian violations; removal of sanctions on top Iranian Revolutionary Guards commanders and other identified sponsors of Iranian-backed terrorism; money that should have gone to victims of Iran terror now to be returned to Tehran’s control, and so on — that it is a disgrace that Members of Congress would seek to prevent a debate and a vote on its merits.

“After all, if this is such a good nuclear deal that, in President Obama’s words yesterday, it amounts to ‘a victory for diplomacy, for American national security, and for the safety and security of the world,’ then why has he and his Congressional supporters worked so hard to prevent the Congress voting on this, the most important, consequential foreign policy decision in decades?

“Surely, if this deal was good, President Obama would welcome a debate on its merits and an approving vote. 

“Instead, the fact that he could not expect approval and has continually sought ways for outflanking the Congress and preventing its role in vetting and voting on the deal — like insisting this nuclear deal is an executive agreement rather than a treaty, so as to prevent the Senate having to review and ratify the agreement an thus a prove it by a two-thirds majority– tell us loudly and clearly that President Obama has mounted a so far successful end-run around the Congress and the Constitution in order to proceed with this disastrous deal.

“This vote has just made America less safe, Israel less safe and the world less safe. 

“When people ask, ‘How did we fail to stop the Holocaust? How did we let Nazi Germany grow so strong that we needed a catastrophic war to stop it? Now we see how it happens. The world turned a blind eye to Hitler and Nazi Germany and their evil designs; now 42 senators have just turned a blind eye to the Islamic Republic of Iran and its evil designs to obtain nuclear weapons, destroy the U.S. and Israel and take over the Middle East.”

The following is a list of senators who voted to block a Congressional vote:

Baldwin (D-WI)

Bennet (D-CO)

Blumenthal (D-CT)

Booker (D-NJ)

Boxer (D-CA)

Brown (D-OH)

Cantwell (D-WA)

Carper (D-DE)

Casey (D-PA)

Coons (D-DE)

Donnelly (D-IN)

Durbin (D-IL)

Feinstein (D-CA)

Franken (D-MN)

Gillibrand (D-NY)

Heinrich (D-NM)

Heitkamp (D-ND)

Hirono (D-HI)

Kaine (D-VA)

King (I-ME)

Klobuchar (D-MN)

Leahy (D-VT)

Markey (D-MA)

McCaskill (D-MO)

Merkley (D-OR)

Mikulski (D-MD)

Murphy (D-CT)

Murray (D-WA)

Nelson (D-FL)

Peters (D-MI)

Reed (D-RI)

Reid (D-NV)

Sanders (I-VT)

Schatz (D-HI)

Shaheen (D-NH)

Stabenow (D-MI)

Tester (D-MT)

Udall (D-NM)

Warner (D-VA)

Warren (D-MA)

Whitehouse (D-RI)

Wyden (D-OR)

  • Center for Law & Justice
    We work to educate the American public and Congress about legal issues in order to advance the interests of Israel and the Jewish people.
    We assist American victims of terrorism in vindicating their rights under the law, and seek to hold terrorists and sponsors of terrorism accountable for their actions.
    We fight anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias in the media and on college campuses.
    We strive to enforce existing law and also to create new law in order to safeguard the rights of the Jewish people in the United States and Israel.