J-Street received more than half a million dollars to advocate for the Obama administration’s controversial nuclear deal with Iran, it has been revealed.
The liberal Jewish group, which bills itself as “pro-Israel and pro-peace” but which critics say takes solely anti-Israel stances, was paid the money by the White House’s main surrogate organization for selling the deal.
The Ploughshares Fund was named in an explosive New York Times profile of Obama aid Ben Rhodes, in which the President’s chief spin doctor listed the central groups responsible for creating an “echo chamber” in order to promote the deal, even when the White House’s official line didn’t jibe with the facts.
According to Associated Press, the group’s 2015 annual report details several organizations which received substantial funds to peddle the official White House line on the nuclear deal. Among them was National Public Radio (NPR), which received a $100,000 grant to promote “national security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran’s nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security.”
Other grantees included: The Arms Control Association ($282,500); the Brookings Institution ($225,000); and the Atlantic Council ($182,500), who “received money for Iran-related analysis, briefings and media outreach, and non-Iran nuclear work,” according to AP.
The National Iranian American Council received more than $281,000, while Princeton University received a $70,000 grant to support former Iranian ambassador and nuclear spokesman Seyed Hossein Mousavian’s “analysis, publications and policymaker engagement on the range of elements involved with the negotiated settlement of Iran’s nuclear program.”
But the largest recipient of Obama administration funding was J-Street, a group which has been closely cultivated by the current White House and is viewed by many as its mouthpiece in the American Jewish community.
According to The Ploughshares Fund’s annual report, J-Street was paid $576,500 to advocate for the deal – something it did ferociously, in spite of the opposition from the majority of the pro-Israel community in the US.
J-Street’s dogged support for the Iran deal came despite the fact that the vast majority of Israelis, including those on the left with whom J-Street claims to align, were strongly opposed – a fact seized upon by the group’s critics as proof it consistently acts against the State of Israel’s interests.
