Joe Lieberman Presses Chuck Schumer To Oppose Iran Deal
Image by Getty Images
Former U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman is pressuring a top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, to block the Iran nuclear deal.
Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew who was a vice presidential candidate in 2000, said in an interview that “Chuck is the key” to blocking the deal. Schumer also is Jewish.
“I just can’t believe Chuck Schumer will support this,” Lieberman, who served four terms representing Connecticut in the Senate, first as a Democrat and then as an Independent, said Sunday on a New York radio show, “The Cats Roundtable,” The Hill website reported. “How can you make a deal with somebody who says they want to kill you?”
Schumer, who is Jewish, reportedly is being pressured by the White House to back the deal and by Israel to oppose it.
Lieberman said Schumer’s rejection of the deal “opens the way for a lot of other Democrats to oppose it as well.”
Schumer said Sunday that he is “studying [the agreement] very carefully.”
Lieberman has called on the White House to renegotiate the deal with better terms that also would better protect Israel.
Congress has two months to consider whether to reject the deal reached July 14 between Iran and six major powers to roll back sanctions in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program. Israel’s government says the deal does not go far enough and leaves Iran a nuclear threshold state.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
