eliot engel

For three years, my organization, Win Without War, and others helped pro-diplomacy activists make their voices heard in Congress in support of President Obama's diplomatic efforts with Iran. Hundreds of thousands of them had done just that -- signing petitions, writing emails, making phone calls, and meeting face-to-face with their representatives and senators in Washington and their hometowns. At every step of the way, congressional offices told us that pro-diplomacy voices had outweighed those opposed by ten-to-one. But then something strange happened. Suddenly, the calls for and against the Iran nuclear deal were coming in at an equal rate.

It was unlikely that the success of having achieved a historic diplomatic nuclear agreement with Iran, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as its formally known, had suddenly made the U.S. public swing against diplomacy. Yet as paid TV ads attacking the JCPOA started popping up and the anti-diplomacy phone calls came pouring in, a dangerous mindset started to spread throughout the halls of Congress: It was going to be bad politics for Democrats to stand with the president and against a small cohort of powerful, deep pocketed special interests.