President Joe Biden’s pick for ambassador to Israel has come under intense scrutiny from GOP senators who grilled him Wednesday over his role in crafting the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran.
Jack Lew, the former Treasury secretary, was one of the architects of the Iran Nuclear Deal agreed upon in 2015 when Biden was vice president. Lew was also questioned in 2016 after he played a role in the Obama administration’s handout of $400 million in cash to Tehran. His confirmation process began on Wednesday, less than two weeks after Iran-backed Hamas terrorists attacked Israel.
The Iran deal was slammed by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back in July 2015, who warned that it would “reward Iran, the terrorist regime in Tehran, with hundreds of billions of dollars” over the coming decade.
“This cash bonanza will fuel Iran’s terrorism worldwide, its aggression in the region and its efforts to destroy Israel, which are ongoing,” Netanyahu said at the time.
The Iran Nuclear Deal gave Iran access to over $100 billion in oil revenues that were previously frozen by U.S. sanctions. The deal also allowed Iran to produce an unlimited amount of enriched uranium after 2031 and lifted restrictions on energy sales. Then, the Obama administration secretly sent a planeload of $400 million in cash directly to Tehran, which Lew helped organize.
Former President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018. Trump had sought to restrict Iran’s missile program and push the Tehran regime to sever its ties to terrorism, but Iran refused to negotiate. Shortly after Biden won back the White House for Democrats, however, the administration began working out a new Iran Nuclear Deal, and last month Biden unfroze $6 billion for Iran in a prisoner exchange deal.
A 2018 report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found that Lew’s Treasury Department, “at the direction of the U.S. State Department, granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth
billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system.” U.S. officials later stated in congressional testimony that “Iran would not be granted access to the U.S. financial system,” the report said.
Biden’s pick for ambassador to Israel now faces a slew of Republican senators who question Lew’s qualification for the job.
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“Jack Lew is simply not the right person to be America’s ambassador to our longtime and strong ally, Israel,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) said in a statement. “Lew was the architect of the failed and dangerous Iran Nuclear Deal. Iran is the world’s number one state-sponsor of terrorism and the primary funder of Hamas terrorism – we don’t need a soft-on-Iran ambassador to Israel. Biden and Lew both have capitulated to Iran in the past – this fact alone should immediately disqualify him.”
Similarly, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News that he’s concerned with Lew’s previous statements to Congress regarding financial agreements between the Obama administration and Iran.
“In the case of Mr. Lew, I have real concerns that he has misled and lied to Congress in the past, in terms of some of the financial arrangements that were made under the Obama Administration,” Rubio said.
Meanwhile, Democrats in the Senate are hoping to expedite Lew’s confirmation, saying there is an added urgency because of the Israel-Hamas war.
“I don’t expect we’ll get unanimity on him, but [Republicans] should want to expedite the [process] for voting on him,” Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin (D-MD) told Punchbowl News.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on Tuesday that he might take a step to slow down the confirmation of Lew, CNN reported. Only 51 senators need to vote in favor of Lew for him to get confirmed, but one senator can block a speedy confirmation process.
Cotton called Lew an “Iran sympathizer who has no business being our ambassador,” adding, isn’t going to skip any of the procedural steps “for a soft-on-Iran ambassadorial nominee to Israel in the middle of a war with Iran’s proxies in Israel.”