No One Is Afraid of AIPAC

The flagship pro-Israel lobbying organization failed to stop Obamas Iran Deal. It may
lose even more influence under Trump.
Armin Rosen

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Jonathan Zalman
At first blush, at least, a Trump presidency promises everything that AIPAC,
Americas largest pro-Israel lobbying group, could ever wish for. After eight
years of rocky relations between Jerusalem and Washington, Donald Trump
promises that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will receive a much
friendlier reception in the White House during his administration. The inclusion
of Iran hawks such as CIA director Mike Pompeo, Trumps nominee for CIA
director, and defense secretary nominee James Mattis could even spell the end
of the nuclear agreement with Iran, especially in light of Tehrans
repeated flirtations with violating the deal.
In reality, Trump poses a string of new problems for AIPAC. Theres definitely
no question that it was better and easier for [AIPAC] if Hillary won, said one
Democratic strategist recently. Policy is only part of it. It wouldve been an
opportunity or their best chance at hitting reset for Democrats. Instead, after
losing its fight against the Iran Deal, the lobbying group must try to stake out
an unstable middle ground during an even more polarizing presidency than
Obamas while fending off challenges from its left and right. In this new world
where J Street really is a pro-Israel validator for segments of the Democrats
and the Zionist Organization of America is a validator for segments of the
Republicans, whats AIPAC role? the strategist wondered.
After an appropriate period of reflection and testing the waters, AIPAC may
well decide that its role is to continue doing whatever it has been doing. Malcolm
Hoenlein, president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations, rejects the claim that that losing fight against the Iran Deal
constitutes evidence of any larger organizational failure on AIPACs part, citing

majority opposition to the agreement both in Congress and the American public.
The fundamental premise that people have been operating on is based on a
deliberate effort to try to paint this as a defeat for the pro-Israel community,
AIPAC, everybody involved when, in fact, that is not the case, he said.

Donald Trump waves after his address to AIPAC on March 21, 2016 in
Washington, DC. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
But continuity may only hasten the lobbys moment of reckoning under Trump
from both sides of the aisle. If a Republican administrationone in which Steve
Bannon is a top adviserbecomes an enabler of a right-wing Israeli government
at the same time the Democrats elevate Israel critics to positions of power
within the party, decades of masterful difference-splitting and triangulation
could shatter. If, for instance, Trump does try to move the U.S. embassy to
Jerusalem, or cuts off all U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority, AIPAC would
be put in the uncomfortable position of supporting controversial moves by a
sitting U.S. president, which would further repel many Democrats. If it opposes
the policy goals of a sitting Israeli prime minister that are supported by most
Jewish Israelis, it would forfeit its status as a bipartisan advocate of the USIsrael relationship in Washington, and become simply another partisan lobbying

groupcompeting with J Street, the ZOA, and even smaller, more obscure
groups like NORPAC, a New Jersey PAC that has donated nearly $4 million to
pro-Israel candidates and PACs since 2010. And if the left-wing Minnesota
congressman and consistent Israel critic Keith Ellison ends up heading the DNC,
AIPAC would have to choose between passively accepting a shift away from
Israel within the Democratic party or openly opposing the leader of the party
that forms a majority of the lobbys donors, supporters, and staff. According to
multiple sources, including former employees, Democrats make up the bulk of
the staff at AIPACs seven-story D.C. office, with estimates averaging around
60 percent.
The risks to AIPACs bipartisan positioning that the superheated partisan
environment surrounding a Trump presidency poses are already visible. When
Bannon, the CEO of Breitbart News, was named chief White House strategist
Nov. 15, Jewish activists criticized AIPAC for refusing to condemn Bannons
appointment or to oppose Trump directly, with the columnist Peter
Beinart alleging that the lobby no longer take[s] moral responsibility for the
country in which [its] members live. This was a bizarre expectation: AIPAC
virtually never weighs in on government-personnel matters, and concerns over
Bannon have little to do with the U.S.-Israel relationship, which is AIPACs
organizational brief. As a lobbying organization, AIPAC also doesnt have the
luxury of immediately making an enemy of the person controlling access to the
White House. The idea of AIPAC as a Trump-era moral arbiter, or as an
organization thats interested in or even capable of limiting the damage of a
Trump presidency and its second-order effects on American political life, runs
counter to AIPACs recent history, and to the lobbys very DNA.
AIPAC is a $128 million organization that can fill an arena and reach nearly any
member of Congress within 24 hours. But as AIPAC grows, so does the conflict
between its organization and its mission. Concerns over Ellisons potential tenure
as head of the Democratic National Committee are within AIPACs organizational
briefEllison has voted against funding for the Iron Dome missile interceptor
and against multiple Iran sanctions packages, and backs a degree of engagement
with Tehran far beyond what the vast majority of his Democratic
colleagues support. But AIPAC has had nothing to say about Ellison, either.
Such notable silences about outr figures who have moved to the center of both
parties might be taken as a sign of strength from an organization that had a
history of winning hard political fights. Except that AIPAC is fresh off the
biggest loss in its history. The groups puzzlement at Donald Trump, and its
paralysis in the face of Bannon and Ellison, therefore appears to be part of a

larger drift into meaninglessness that was apparent during the fight over the
Iran Deal, and became even more starkly visible during this past presidential
campaign.
The public airing of AIPACs election-related troubles began this year on March
16, when a group of rabbis announced that they were organizing a boycott of
Donald Trumps March 21 address to AIPACs annual policy conference. It was
the first edition of the lobbys premiere event to be held in Washingtons
20,000-seat Verizon Center, and the first since the July 2015 announcement of
the Iran nuclear agreement.. The boycott was organized in response to Trumps
various inflammatory statements about immigrants, Muslims, and other minority
groups. Lobby representatives said the speech was simply an opportunity to hear
out a major presidential candidate, and claimed that AIPAC automatically
invites any viable White House contender.
Attendees and organizers were clearly uneasy with Trump speakingI dont
think Trump had any major support in that room, one former AIPAC staffer
recalled. But they were also wary of excluding the potential next president of
the United States from their most important event, regardless of who he was or
what he believed. Using a teleprompter, Trump delivered a fairly anodyne proIsrael address, reportedly written by Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and the
owner of the New York Observer. But he still couldnt help himself: In an
apparent ad-lib, Trump called President Barack Obama the worst thing ever to
happen to Israel. Believe me, believe me. This wasnt quite on the scale of
accusing Mexican immigrants of being criminals and rapists, but it nevertheless
represented a crisis for the lobby, which tries to be fastidiously bipartisan.
I think there is an understood agreement with the campaigns that youre going
to talk about your campaign, one former AIPAC staffer said. You might talk
about some policies, but youre not going to hurl aspersions about people with
whom we have to work, from our house. Tom DeLay never got up and talked
about how Nancy Pelosi was fucking up the country. Within a day, AIPAC had
issued an unprecedented apology for Trumps attack on the president. They felt
they needed to remind everybody that thats not what AIPAC is a platform for,
the former staffer explained.
But AIPACs mea culpa displeased the Trump team and Kushner himself, and the
episode seems unlikely to be forgotten by a president who is infamous for
holding grudges. Nor are AIPACs bipartisan policy prescriptionsmany of which
were forged during eight years of trying to appease a White House that tended
to see Netanyahu as a political obstaclelikely to convince Trump that AIPAC is
a natural ally. For example, the 2016 Republican Party platform makes no

mention of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, undermining

AIPACs long-time bipartisan two-state doctrine, which soon mysteriously
disappeared from sections of the organizations website. The views of David
Friedman, Trumps nominee for ambassador to Israel, are well to the right of
AIPACs party line as wellFriedman believes the two-state solution is an
illusion, and is a prominent supporter of the controversial Bet El settlement in
the central West Bank. As AIPAC twists and turns, American Jews may soon be
confronted with a once-unlikely reality: The White House and the Israeli
government might find it convenient to ignore a flagship pro-Israel lobbying
organization that likes to advertise its influence and which serves as a lightning
rod for attacks on Jewish political power from both the left and the right.
***
How did an organization whose supporters and opponents alike often portrayed it
as an unseen hand guiding U.S. foreign policy become such a likely nonfactor in
the political calculations of both parties? While the short answer may be Donald
Trump, the slightly longer and more accurate answer is the Iran Deal.
In recent months, Ive spoken with over 40 people who worked closely on the
Iran nuclear issue, including former and current AIPAC staffers, strategists and
aides from both parties and both houses of Congress, former administration
officials, policy experts, and pro-Israel activists. Although they often disagreed
on how, why, and even whether AIPAC lost the fight over the Iran Deal, a
picture nevertheless emerged: When confronted with the nuclear agreement,
whose implementation began a year ago this month, AIPAC stuck to its brand of
triangulation, bipartisanship, and self-preservation, and failed to satisfy many
supporters of Israel, mollify the groups critics, or achieve the organizations
major desired policy result.
But AIPACs problems ran deeper than any specific tactical or strategic
miscalculation. The lobbying juggernaut repeatedly struggled to take a coherent
stand on an issue it cared deeply about, raising questions of organizational
purpose and self-definition that Trump-era political heat has suddenly and
unexpectedly brought to a boil.
The Iran nuclear agreement was reached July 14, 2015. When AIPAC decided to
oppose the accord two days later, it set itself up for a battle it likely knew it
would lose. On April 2, 2015, a U.S.-led group of six major powers finalized a
political framework agreement with Iran in Lausanne, Switzerland, clearing a
major hurdle to that Julys deal. And on May 22, Obama signed the Iran Nuclear
Agreement Review Act, an AIPAC-supported bill sponsored by Tennessee
Republican Sen. Bob Corker and Maryland Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin that

created a veto-proof majority standard for halting the deals implementation,

and a filibuster-proof standard for even voting to approve or disapprove of the
deal in the Senate. They were constrained by the fact the prime minister came
out so strongly but theyre professionals, one former Obama administration
official said, in reference to Netanyahus polarizing March 3,
2015 speech before a joint session of Congress opposing the deal. They can
count to 60. It was very obvious when the Lausanne deal happened and the
Corker legislation came through that the fight was over.
It might have even been over before then. Aaron David Miller, vice president of
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former State
Department official, said the Iran negotiations matched a willful, and to some
degree, skillful U.S. administration with an Iranian partner who was also
determined for any number of reasons to reach this agreement. There was
little AIPAC could do to change that underlying reality.
AIPAC is a $128 million organization that can fill an arena and reach nearly any
member of Congress within 24 hours. But as AIPAC grows, so does the conflict
between its organization and its mission.
But AIPAC didnt have the option of doing nothing. The entirety of the Israeli
political spectrum opposed the deal: not just Netanyahu, but leading opposition
politicians, including Isaac Herzog and Yair Lapid. Steve Rosen, a longtime AIPAC
official, said that following Israels lead is how AIPAC bridges its internal
dilemmas. On controversial issues, including the peace process, AIPAC is guided
by a consensus that Israel is a democracy, and those people have the right to
choose their leaders, and its their lives that are on the line. (Rosen left the
organization in 2005 when U.S. prosecutors accused him of violating the
Espionage Act during the course of his work for AIPAC. The charges were later
dropped).
There was also the sense that supporters of Israel had accumulated political
clout and institutional heft for exactly this kind of high-stakes battle. I think
there was a feeling in the AIPAC leadership that this was really a moment of
truththat this was the kind of moment for which AIPAC was created, said
Joseph Lieberman, a former U.S. senator and chairman of the advocacy
group United Against a Nuclear Iran.

John Kerry delivers remarks during AIPACs Policy Conference at the Walter
Washington Convention Center March 3, 2014 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Chip

Somodevilla/Getty Images)
As soon as the fight over the deal moved to Congress, it became clear that
AIPAC was asking a lot of Democrats, who, thanks to the oversight mechanism in
the Corker-Cardin bill, would have to buck a determined White House on three
separate votesa cloture vote for a resolution of disapproval, a vote on the
resolution itself, and a veto overridein order to actually halt the agreement.
As one Democratic congressional staffer explained, it made little sense
politically for a Democratic member to defy the president on a single one of
these votes. Knowing that the deal was going to go through, members of
Congress then have to reconcile any concerns they had about the agreement and
arguments made by AIPAC with the president of the United States telling them
they would not get a pass on this, the staffer said. This dynamic was so rigid
that the source wondered if any lobbying on the deal made a difference: Even if
nothing happened, if AIPAC had not come [to the Hill], if the administration had
not come, if other groups had not come up, I dont know that the vote would have
been all that different.
On July 17, 2015, three days after the nuclear deal was reached , AIPAC
announced the creation of Citizens for a Nuclear-Free Iran (CNFI), which had a
war chest of over $20 million, much of which was spent on anti-deal television

advertising. But the fight that really mattered, and that would test whether
AIPAC could assert its leverage without wrecking its bipartisan model, was in
Washington.
Just before Congress entered its August 2015 recess, Jewish members
gathered on Capitol Hill to meet with high-level AIPAC executives, including
Howard Kohr, the groups executive director since 1996. Kohr famously keeps a
low profile; he doesnt throw ideas or words around cavalierly, one
congressional staffer explained.
Kohr is admired among former AIPAC staffers. He came to AIPAC in 1985 while
in his late 20s, leaving a job as legislative director at the National Jewish
Coalition (now called the Republican Jewish Coalition) to serve as deputy for
Steve Rosen, then AIPACs director of foreign policy. AIPAC has grown
considerably under Kohrs leadership: In 2005, the group had $48 million in
assets. By 2013, it had $128 million.
Hes fostered a familial atmosphere, partly by proving that no task is beneath
him: One former staffer recalled seeing Kohr stuffing envelopes before a board
meeting; another remembered him participating in an annual phone-a-thon meant
to re-engage lapsed members. Hes shy and bookish but approachable and
level-headed, the kind of boss who doesnt seem like hes off in an ivory tower
somewhere. Hes a giant, someone with the capability of a White House chief
of staff who could easily command an eight-figure salary at a lobbying
firm. According to the Forward, he earned $636,000 in 2014, overseeing an
organization with $77.7 million in yearly revenue.
One former staffer said Kohr is a Mount Rushmore organization builder, but
then abruptly wondered what that really counted for in light of how the Iran
fight played out. If his job is institutional stability and growth, hes the most
extraordinary leader Ive ever seen. If his job is furthering the mission, if you
had asked me that any time before early 2015 I would have said hes also
extraordinarily good at that.
A former senior congressional aide was less generous: He is someone who has
been intoxicated by the access granted to him at every level of government, and
the idea of being locked out of certain rooms in the executive branch weighs
more heavily when decision points come on Capitol Hill than it should.
During that meeting with Kohr, the members who considered supporting the deal
explained how difficult it would be for them to go against the president on a
resolution of disapprovalin light of Republican pressure and rhetoric, a vote
against the agreement would be interpreted as a direct rebuke to Obama. Even
members who considered opposing the deal were concerned about the fallout of

the United States nixing a major diplomatic accord. Some members asked
AIPAC executives whether they could back a nonbinding statement of support
instead of a measure with the power to spike the deal entirely. Perhaps realizing
this was tantamount to surrender, and a nonstarter with Republicans committed
to actually blocking the deal, the AIPAC officials replied with a hard no and
restated their insistence on a binding vote.

Barack Obama addresses the 2008 AIPAC Policy Conference at the Washington
Convention Center June 4, 2008 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty
Images)
AIPAC held two full-scale fly-ins of its activists during the congressional-review
period, and launched what insiders describe as the biggest mobilization in the
lobbys history. The Hill took notice: One staffer compared the avalanche of
meetings and phone calls to organized labors campaign against the Trade
Promotion Authority bill, which unfolded over the same summer. But there was
one major difference: Organized-labor groups, including the AFL-CIO, had cut
off all funding to members of Congress before the TPA vote, and vowed to
restore it only to those who opposed the bill. AIPAC chose not to play that kind
of hardball. Multiple people who attended Hill meetings that included AIPACaffiliated activists, along with activists from other groups, recalled how intense
some of the sit-downs with staffers and members of Congress got. But the
meetings would also include an acknowledgement that there were unlikely to be
any direct consequences of supporting the deal.
A source present in Hill meetings with AIPAC activists said they typically went
this way: In the meeting, a group of 10 to 15 constituents would give a very

harsh portrayal of the agreement and plead with the membersome of them
would crysaying that this is the crucial issue, we really need you on this. And
before the meeting was over, someone would thank them for their support, say
we hope the relationship can go forward and we can work with them again, that
kind of thing. It was, Please dont vote for this, please please dont vote for this,
see you next year. For the source, this was illustrative of the whole problem
with AIPACs tactics. There was no solid message of, Heres what we want you
to do, and heres whats going to happen if you dont. Everyone from the AARP to
the Spotted Owl Society knows that thats a formula members will understand.
Michael Pregent, a former Army intelligence officer and executive director of
Veterans Against the Deal, attended a number of Hill meetings with AIPAC
activists on Sept. 9, 2015, the day of an anti-Iran-deal rally on the National
Mall. There were aspects of AIPACs Hill push that impressed him: The group
hosted a strategy session for activists at a Washington hotel the night before
and ensured that each meeting included actual constituents of the member of
Congress being lobbied.
But the meetings could get disorganizedPregent said AIPAC activists even
openly disagreed with him in one instance when he attempted to discuss Iranian
support for proxy groups that had fought the U.S. military in Iraq. He noticed a
lack of uniformity in the activists talking points and sensed a division between
AIPAC members who were committed to stopping the deal and those who didnt
want to appear overly hostile to members of Congress they appeared to know
personally. Nobody was afraid of AIPAC, Pregent said of the members of
Congress he met with. They knew that AIPAC wasnt united.
***
AIPAC applies a softer touch to the political process than is generally
recognized. The group exerts its influence through two means: a Washingtonbased shop that engages in traditional lobbying and policy-related activities, and
grassroots-level organizing largely aimed at fostering access and developing
personal relationships with members of Congress.
A former AIPAC staffer explained how the latter works: Say you give $10,000
to AIPAC, the source explained. That donor gets nice seats at Policy
Conference and becomes part of an informal local network of other AIPAC
activists giving to congressional candidates. Importantly, AIPAC does not direct
this networkas a public-affairs committee, the lobby cannot legally endorse
candidates or channel donations. But there are some broadly accepted unwritten
rules among AIPAC-affiliated donors, like not giving to the opponent of nearly
any incumbent member, even if that opponent is the more pro-Israel of the two

candidates. As one activist put it, AIPAC tells us that are two kinds of
members of Congress: Friends, and potential friends.
If theres a race for an open House seat, the network isnt gonna give money to
the challenger, the former staffer explained, but it still needs to get to know
him. Later, privately, you send the challenger a message saying the pro-Israel
people cant raise money for you, but let me max out to you and write your Israel
position paper. If the challenger wins, you are the key contact to that office
and youre the one raising money from that network.
The key contact is the person through which all the really important asks are
made, the former staffer said. Thanks to training from AIPACs staff, a key
contact learns how to become a focused political operator. Youre gonna know to
keep it so that a member of Congress sees you coming down the hall and thinks
Israel. They dont think of your business or of any issue other than Israel.
AIPAC has a key contact for virtually every congressional office. The key
contact has the ability to bring an issue to a members attention or get a call
returned personally from that member within 24 hours. Key contacts dont have
to threaten or yell or know specifics, said one former senior congressional aide.
Usually they dont know specifics. Ultimately, theyre reading off of AIPACs
talking points.
The key contacts effectively collapse the distance between AIPACs Washington
office, the lobbys 17 regional offices, and decision makers on Capitol Hill. Its a
system based on relationships rather than overt leverage or the cold
calculations of policy. The fact that AIPAC is legally prohibited from directing
donations or fundraising for candidates devolves power from its Washington
operation and puts the onus for decisive action on AIPAC-affiliated donors.
[AIPACs] ability to hold lawmakers accountable hinges on the willingness of
major fundraisers to punish a lawmaker that didnt go along with what they
thought they would go along with, one senior Republican congressional aide
noted.
But lobbying thats overly determined by relationshipsand thus by accesshas
arguably hamstrung AIPAC. It gives considerable power to the member of
Congress, who can decide to politely stop listening to his or her key contacts. It
also makes AIPAC hesitant to criticize individual members of Congress or other
political figures for fear of blowing up the relationships on which the groups
influence is based. This imbalance grows over time: The longer the relationship
lasts, the more the lobby has invested in it, and the more it has to lose from a
rupture. There also isnt a clear threshold for a key contact withdrawing
support. If there was a red line for AIPAC declaring that members of Congress

were dead to them, it wasnt crossed at any point before or after the Iran Deal
debate by any member.
AIPAC is almost constitutionally incapable of making value judgments about
individual members of Congress. It doesnt make very many value judgments
about individual U.S. officials, periodAIPAC remained as silent on Trumps
appointment of Steve Bannon, or on Keith Ellisons run for DNC chief, as it has
been on virtually every other personnel matter of recent decades. AIPAC hasnt
filed a Form 5 independent expenditure report with the FECthe standard
declaration for a group that isnt legally classified as a PAC that wants to spend
money in order to directly influence an electionin any of the past four federal
election cycles. (In contrast, the Emergency Committee for Israel, the rightwing, pro-Israel pressure group co-founded by Weekly Standard editor William
Kristol, filed 31 Form 5s between the 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016 election
cycles.)
The lobby internally tracks the voting records of individual members of
Congress, but according to multiple sources, it will not give out a members
record unless an AIPAC member asks to see itsomeone who wants to piece
together Ellisons voting record on Iran sanctions or military aid to Israel, or
who wants to know which votes AIPAC thinks are important in determining a
members pro-Israel bona fides, are left to fend for themselves. AIPAC is
worried that distributing voting records to anyone could be misconstrued: It
could be seen as an endorsement by AIPAC or as criticism, because there are
members of Congress with lots of bad votes, one former staffer said. Other
lobbying groups rate members of Congress using percentages or letter grades.
One AIPAC official claimed that the organization does not even do this
internally.
This even-handedness had an impact on how AIPAC fought the Iran Deal. CNFI
polled approval of the Iran deal within a number of key Democratic congressional
districts and found two-thirds opposition to the agreement in most of them, and
plurality opposition to the agreement in nearly all of them. The poll results were
conveyed to individual members of Congress in meetings with CNFI staff. But
they did not appear in any of CNFIs public material, including its television ads,
which accounted for the majority of the organizations over $20 million in
spending. The ads did not name members of Congress who were considering
backing the deal but whose constituents opposed itpreventing the lobby from
translating remarkably lopsided public agreement with its position into hard
political capital.

The Mellman Groupwhich is known as a Democratic firmconducted polling for

CNFI and consulted for the group in other areas as well. As Mellman Group CEO
Mark Mellman noted, There was nothing in any way, shape, or form that was
anti-Democrat in anything that CNFI did. He believes that a more
confrontational approach wouldnt have worked. Having dealt with a lot of these
people over a lot of years, I think that tends to get their back up against the
wall and tends to harden the partisanship, and therefore makes it more difficult
to get them on our side. It would have created vastly bigger strains and
tensions between the Jewish community, the pro-Israel community, and
Congress, but it wouldnt have had a positive effect.
As AIPAC officials explained, the lobby didnt want to exact costs from
members of Congress, even on an issue of overriding importance like the Iran
Deal. Were just not in the business of threatening, an AIPAC official said.
Its not our way.
***

Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a joint meeting of the United States

Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol March 3, 2015 in Washington,
DC. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The straitjacket of low-impact bipartisanship that constrained AIPACs efforts
against the Iran Deal is the long-term result of two of the lobbying
organizations most important accomplishments. In the early 1980s, AIPACaffiliated donors contributed to the defeat of Illinois Republican Sen. Charles
Percy, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a key
supporter of a U.S. sale of the AWACS surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia, a
deal AIPAC unsuccessfully fought. With its deterrence in place, AIPAC then

learned how to package pro-Israel positions in ways that members of both

parties could accept.
Dan Cohen began working for AIPAC as a Hill lobbyist in the mid-1980s, not long
after the AWACS battle. In those days, Republicans were ideologically opposed
to foreign-aid bills, and would vote against them even if they included assistance
to Israel. Cohen was part of an effort to incorporate aid to Israel into the
defense budget instead, in order to win Republican support for US aid to the
country. Youve provided something in the context of their worldview that
works for them, he explained. The approach paid off handsomely: In 1989,
Israel became one of the United States first five major non-NATO allies.
Around the same time, AIPAC pushed for the establishment of joint U.S.-Israeli
weapons programs, like the Arrow missile defense system, which entered
development in 1986, and the Kurnass 2000, a modernization of the avionics
systems on U.S.-built F-4 Phantoms used in Israels air force.
Cohen said that between 1986 and 1993, U.S. public spending on military aid to
Israel leapt to $960 million from $15 million. AIPAC had sparked a bipartisan
policy shift. Tom Dine wanted the sides to fight over the pro-Israel agenda,
said Cohen of AIPACs then-executive director, who left in 1993. That was
AIPACs great success in the 80s.
But the bipartisan approach that worked so well in the 1980s and early 1990s
created severe problems for AIPAC under the Obama administration, which
proved more willing to openly pressure Israel and openly engage with its enemies
than any White House in decades. AIPAC had to keep up its access to an
uncooperative executive branch while sticking to its policy of only backing
legislation that has bipartisan support. Now, during the Trump administration,
bipartisanship has the danger of creating the appearance of AIPAC courting a
president who has been accused of ignoring or even abetting the anti-Semitism
of some of his supporters.
You always have the push-pull architecture of the AIPAC lobby model, a
former senior congressional aide explained, which is to push Democrats as far
as theyre willing to go, and to pull back Republicans from going farther than
Democrats are willing to go. Theyre able to play each side against each other to
eventually land in a compromised middle place.
The Iran Deal fight brought AIPAC to a series of unhappy mediums, none more
consequential than the botched attempt to sanction Iran after serious
negotiations had started. On Nov. 24, 2013, a U.S.-led group of six world powers
and Iran reached an interim agreement on limits to Tehrans nuclear program,
the essential first-step in the negotiation of the July 2015 deal. On Dec. 13,

2013, Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob
Menendez introduced a bill that would impose sanctions on Iran several months
in the future, a move meant to penalize the regime for dragging out talks while
placing a time limit on negotiations.
Sanctions were AIPACs home turf. One congressional staffer likened AIPACs
role in previous sanctions legislation to that of an editor in journalism: Its
lobbyists and analysts would look for gaps in the proposed statutes, raise ideas,
and propose improvements. The Iran sanctions were also a triumph of AIPACs
bipartisanship model. Between 2010 and 2013, Congress sanctioned Iranian
exports and financial institutions in a series of near-unanimous votes. These
were measures with which the Obama administration was often uneasy, because
it viewed them as undermining the White Houses ability to conduct foreign
policy and its freedom to engage Tehran diplomatically. Obama still enforced the
sanctions, even though the legislation gave the executive branch considerable
leeway.
The politics of Kirk-Menendez proved different than usual. The bill had
bipartisan support; at one point, it boasted 17 Democratic co-sponsors. But
other Democrats, and the White House, saw the bill as a plot to scuttle
negotiations entirely. Theres debate over whether the legislation ever had
enough Democratic support to make it out of the Senate or to override the
inevitable veto. Either way, Harry Reid, then the Senate majority leader,
refused to bring it to a vote.
In February of 2014, Kirk organized a letter to Reid signed by 42 of the
Senates 45 Republicans, urging a vote on the bill. AIPAC freaked out at the
letter, according to one Hill source (an account corroborated by reports from Eli
Lake, then at The Daily Beast). Realizing that bipartisan support for the bill was
breaking under White House pressure, Menendez gave a speech in the Senate
explaining why his colleagues shouldnt vote on his own bill, which most of them
supported. And on Feb. 6, 2014, AIPAC issued a statement conceding that it
was not the right time for a vote on a bill it had been backing.
Deal opponents believe that the sanctions measure was the pivotal Hill episode
of the 14-month Iran negotiations. Kirk-Menendez was the most important time
to fight back, and AIPAC didnt want to do that, one observer with knowledge
of the situation said.
AIPAC believed a fight over Kirk-Menendez would have been costly and futile.
It was clear as day Democrats were going to give them the chance to do the
negotiations, one AIPAC official said. The writing was on the wall at that point.

 It wouldve done no good to move forward on a fight we would lose at White

House pressure.
By then, AIPAC already had an uncertain recent record of balancing
bipartisanship and access against the advancement of its policy objectives. On
Aug. 21, 2013, the Iranian-supported regime of Syrian President Bashar alAssad launched sarin-gas-tipped projectiles into Ghouta, a rebel-held suburb of
Damascus. The attack killed an estimated 1,500 people and violated Obamas
red line, the presidents standard for intervening in Syrias civil war with
military force.
According to multiple sources, then-White House Chief of Staff Denis
McDonough called Howard Kohr in September of 2013 to request that AIPAC
support airstrikes on the Assad regime in Syria, which Obama said he would not
launch without Congressional authorization. AIPAC ended up backing the strikes
and lobbied for them on the Hill. An AIPAC official explained why American
military involvement in the Syrian Civil War fell within the groups brief of
issues: The possibility of a Middle Eastern regime or nonstate group using
biochemical weapons was one of the great concerns that affected Israel and
the whole region. Still, members of Congress were generally less supportive of
military action after receiving national security briefings on the proposed
operation. The Syria strikes never came to a vote, thanks to the chemicalweapons agreement reached between Russia, Syria, and the United States in
September of 2013. Eventually, the impression grew that regardless of either
sides intentions, a pliant AIPAC had let the White House draw it into a losing
fight, even after the president had already decided not to enforce his own red
line.
***
By early 2015, AIPAC was preparing its network for a fight over the Iran Deal.
Starting in January of 2015, the message was, Were going to start talking
about three things: Iran, Iran, and Iran, one AIPAC activist recalled. But
sanctions were already off the table. And congressional-oversight legislation
became the project of a lawmaker who was not considered to be particularly
close with the lobby: Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker, one of three
Republicans not to sign Kirks February 2014 letter urging a vote on forwardlooking sanctions. The result, the Corker-sponsored and AIPAC-supported Iran
Nuclear Agreement Review Act, created a three-vote structure for stopping the
dealcloture, disapproval, veto-overrideand passed on May 14, 2015.
Democratic and Republican leadership in the Senate did not allow amendments on
the bill to be heard, and as one staffer recalled, AIPAC was not supportive of

an open amendment process. The bill passed the Senate 98-1. (The only Senator
who voted against it was hawkish Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton.)

Hillary Clinton waves during AIPACs annual policy conference on March 21, 2016
in Washington, DC. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The Iran Deal debate concluded in Congress on Sept. 10, 2015, with a failed
cloture vote and no Senate vote on a resolution of disapproval, even though most
of the chambers members opposed the nuclear agreement. The Corker bill was
set up to enable Obama to say that he gained congressional sign-off on the deal
despite the opposition of a majority of the House and Senate, said one
strategist who works in the Republican pro-Israel world and was closely involved
in the Iran Deal fight. One senior Republican congressional staffer echoed this
sentiment, citing the bills failure to mandate that the deal be considered under
expedited procedure, which the Senate uses when considering so-called 1-2-3
agreements on international civilian nuclear cooperation and doesnt require a
cloture vote. If you wanted to have a vote it would be totally reasonable to use
that procedure. But if you want the appearance of an up or down votebut want
it to ultimately failyou hide behind the 60-vote [cloture] threshold, the
staffer said.
Still, the legislation created a 60-day review period, during which Congress held
a series of hearings with administration brass, CNFI ran ads, AIPAC held flyins, and 55 percent of the American public came to oppose the agreement, with
only 25 percent supporting it, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published

in late August of 2015. The law obligated the administration to submit all
documents related to the agreement to Congressdocuments that revealed the
controversial inspection protocols for the previously closed-off Parchin military
facility, and the actual time frame of agreed restrictions on Irans centrifuge
development. But the bill did not secure a congressional vote on the deal, which
would have required six Democratic members of the Senate to join the
chambers 54 Republicans in voting for cloture. Every Democrat but Bob
Menendez, Chuck Schumer, Joe Manchin, and Ben Cardin voted to sustain the
filibuster.
AIPAC decided not to pick ugly public battles that could have permanently
alienated Democrats who were already ambivalent about the dealbut that only
means the anti-deal side failed to get a cloture vote out of senators who may
already have substantively agreed with them. Nobody I talked to among the
Senate Democrats said, Joe, I just have to disagree with you on this one, this is
a great agreement, or that, as Tim Kaine said [during the Oct. 4 vice
presidential debate] this stops Iran from being a nuclear power without us firing
a shot, Joe Lieberman recalled. Nobody said that to me.
***
Activists, strategists, and congressional staffers believe that AIPAC has
sounded a tactical retreat in the year-and-a-half since the Iran Deal became
official. Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a wavering Democrat who many in the proIsrael world expected to vote for cloture in September of 2015 but who voted
to keep up the filibuster after expressing deep reservations about the deal,
spoke at a luncheon for AIPAC donors just a month later, according to
Bloombergs Eli Lake. In October of 2016, one congressional staffer struggled to
remember the last Iran-related letter AIPAC had circulated, or any Iranrelated issue the lobby had taken up, aside from reauthorization of the Iran
Sanctions Act. Theyve backed off of it, the staffer said of AIPAC and Iranrelated issues on the Hill.
But AIPAC hasnt remained totally silent on Iran since the deal was reached, and
the group has made at least one revealing and futile attempt to push the issue
forward over the past year. According to multiple sources, AIPAC wanted to
include new ballistic-missile-testing-related sanctions as part of its Policy
Conference lobbying package in March of 2016. The push for new sanctions was a
bust almost from the beginning. Congressional leadership was willing to move
forward, but the White House communicated a veto threat that soon reached
AIPAC. The theme of the conference was come together, or coming together,
or something like that, a Democratic congressional adviser recalled. The

message they wanted to send was that were moving forward, and at that point
to launch another battle with the administration was not going to be conducive
to that goal.
According to another congressional staffer, the episode is also proof of the
lingering wounds of the Iran Deal fight. Remember, this was after two [Iranian
missile] tests violating previous [UNSC] resolutions, the staffer said. And
there was still no bipartisanship on ballistic-missile sanctions. If that doesnt
show that AIPAC broke the Hill on bipartisanship, I dont know what does.
Even supporters of the group can see that its performance in the Iran deal fight
casts doubt on the applicability of the lobbys favored methods in the current
political environment. A couple years ago the theme of Policy Conference was
relationships matter, one former staffer recalled. Ive been in politics for a
long time, and I bought into that when I worked there. But Ive come to realize
that relationships dont matter. Fear does! Relationships dont matter at all.
The present moment might be less perilous if AIPAC were a slimmer, hungrier,
and more fear-based operationone that didnt fill arenas, live and die on
access, and leave observers guessing who its friends and enemies really were.
But scaling back, or even just deciding not to expand, would require a revolution
in the lobbys thinking.
At the organizations Washington, office, evidence of AIPACs tendency to use
organizational growth as a cure-all for some of its deepest internal tensions is
affixed to the Jerusalem Stone in the lobby. Perpendicular to the elevator bank,
right near an abstract painting of the American and Israeli flags, large lines of
text announce that the buildings construction was made possible by Dr. Miriam
Adelson and Sheldon Adelson. But not long after the building opened, the
Adelsons broke with AIPAC over the groups support for the two-state solution.
Since then, the gulf between AIPAC-type bipartisanship and more right-wing
pro-Israel activism has only grown as groups like the Emergency Committee for
Israel have entered the scene and the Obama administration simultaneously
pursued peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians and nuclear talks with
Iran. Still, AIPAC kept growing through it all; the group had $50 million in net
assets at the time of its break with Adelson in 2008, and has more than twice
that today. On Dec. 1, 2016, AIPAC submitted plans to the D.C. Zoning
Commission to build what the Washington City Paper describes as a new 11story commercial office intended to serve the organizations projected future
growth.
The lesson that AIPAC took from its turbulent experience with the Obama
administration is that it is possible to keep expanding dramatically even in the

face of public setbacks and policy defeats. Ironically, it could take an effusively
pro-Israel Republican president to demonstrate that organization-building is not
the same as winning political battles. In its effort to maintain a 30-year-old
model of bipartisanship that seems to have little place in todays Washingtonin
trying to be all things to all people as Israel becomes an even more polarizing
issue in the United StatesAIPAC will likely endanger its place at the center of
policy debates that affect Israels future.
***
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Armin Rosen is a New York-based writer. He has written for The Atlantic, City
Journal, and World Affairs Journal, and was recently a senior reporter
for Business Insider.