John Kerry touts Iran nuclear deal as good for Israel

He warned of the consequences of rejecting the deal between Tehran and world powers including the United States.

“So it’s very disappointing”, said Bob Corker, chairman of the powerful senate foreign relations committee.

The email sent out by Federation came four days after two other major Jewish Federations – in Boston and Miami – urged Congress to reject the agreement and asked community members to urge their elected representatives to scuttle the bill.

Many analysts see the chance of the Iranian leadership eventually rejecting the accord as small, since Tehran needs the lifting of sanctions to help its isolated economy. Failure by the President to obtain congressional support will tell the Iranians and the world that this is Barack Obama’s deal, not an agreement with lasting support from the United States.

“I believe that you’ve been fleeced”, he said.

“It isnt a better deal, some sort of unicorn arrangement involving Irans complete capitulation, ” Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“President Obama has made it crystal clear we will never accept a nuclear-armed Iran, ” Kerry said.

“That is not the way democracy should operate”, he said.

Kerry was welcomed to the committee chamber by about a half-dozen Code Pink anti-nuclear activists sporting bright pink “Peace with Iran” T-shirts.

But he was visibly irked by the aggressive line of questioning from Republican senators, a day after closed-door briefings to explain the deal to them. “There’s an answer, and it’s detailed”.

Even so, no matter the objections — and Republicans leveled many in a hearing that stretched until midafternoon — Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew were ready with responses.

Lew, whose department oversees economic sanctions against Iran that would be eased in return for curbs on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. “Nor can we sanction that knowledge away”. Lawmakers can’t stop the U.S. from implementing the agreement entirely.

Moniz vouched for the deal as “based in science and analysis”.

In a park opposite the White House, anti-war activists challenged opponents of the deal, such as Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer in September will make the first visit to Iran by a European head of state since 2004, his office said. “I think that’s hyperbole”.

Protesters, consisting mainly of pro-Israel and right-wing supporters, view the deal as a huge threat to the safety and security of both the United States and Israel. President Obama has said he will veto a vote against the deal, but would need enough Democrats supporting him to sustain the veto.

“I think that this debate is one that we’ll be engaged in by not only the members of Congress but the American people“, said Senator Cardin. He added, without elaboration, “There’s a lot of tools at our disposal”.

But Kerry, peering wearily over a pair of wire-rim glasses, encountered a tsunami of skepticism from Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee, which as a Democratic senator he once chaired.