When the Senate opens on Thursday, it shall for two months review the nuclear agreement with Iran. Apart from debates and hectic lobbying, supporters and opponents of the deal are going to be spending millions of dollars to rally the American public and U.S. lawmakers toward their side.
But in a twist to the tale that is sure to be giving President Obama a few jitters, the opponents of the deal are said to be loaded with cash.
Opposing the deal are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), United Against a Nuclear Iran, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran and the Republican Jewish Coalition. These groups have among them between $20 million and $40 million which they plan to spend to educate the U.S. citizens on why the deal should not go through. The modus operandi is very simple: TV commercials (that began airing last Friday), social media ads and new websites that include alleged flaws in the agreement and contact information for members of Congress, reports USA Today.
The liberal Jewish group J Street's spokesman Alan Elsner said that the group has raised $2 million to promote the deal. MoveOn.org and other liberal groups are also mobilizing supporters in favor of the deal, though the amount of money they have remained remains unclear, according to the Institute of American Studies. The economic disparity between the "ayes" and the "nays" is stark, to say the least.
Obama meanwhile will be using his political clout to get the American people to support the accord. Key members of his cabinet - Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew - will be defending the deal.
Obama took to addressing the issue on television and took a swipe at "the money" and "the lobbyists" being marshaled by opponents of his controversial nuclear deal during an interview on "The Daily Show."
"We were talking earlier about the Middle East and an issue like Iran," Obama told host Jon Stewart. "I really want people to pay attention to this issue and learn about it, and then contact your elected representatives and express your opinion."
Stating his belief that there were no better terms possible for the deal - a claim consistently rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - Obama added: "This is an example of where we have a huge issue of war and peace. Either we stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon through diplomacy, or potentially we have a military option. You've got a bunch of talking heads and pundits, and folks who are not going to be making sacrifices, if in fact you end up in a conflict, who are reprising some of the same positions we saw during the Iraq war, and if they are not hearing from citizens, then we end up making bad choices," reports Times of Israel.
