PRESIDENT BIDEN SHAKEUP: Bad News For Israel?

Days before potentially renewing the Iran Nuclear Deal, one of President Biden’s senior advisors, also a special government employee and former Ambassador to Israel, is bolting. Does this mean he is no longer in support of the deal?

Senior Advisor Dan Shapiro, also referred to as the “Israel whisperer,” issued a statement announcing his leave:

I joined the State Department last August for a 6-month consultancy because I supported the Biden Administration’s policy on ensuring Iran never possesses a nuclear weapon. I still support it today as I embrace a great new opportunity. If and when there is a deal, which remains uncertain, I will have more to say then.

ACLJ Senior Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy and former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell gave his take on this move:

He is clearly frustrated. He claims that he is not frustrated and that there’s no policy differences and that he is leaving. But as a former Ambassador to Israel and an advisor on these issues, you shouldn’t be leaving before we know what the JCPOA deal is, we keep hearing that it is close. And the Russians are being very clear that the Iranians got more than what they thought, that the American negotiators were weak. This is going to be a disaster. He is abandoning ship. I don’t care what he says. You don’t leave right before a historic agreement if you think the historic agreement is going to be good.

This agreement is being negotiated by the Russians during a Russian war on Ukraine. A war that was once expected to end in a matter of days is lasting a lot longer than people thought. Ric explained if this could be an intelligence failure:

It is some sort of intelligence failure. Maybe it’s an intelligence failure from the newsrooms of Washington D.C. . . . There was a groupthink in Washington that Ukraine would fall in 2-3 days. Joe Biden’s first policy was let’s get the President of Ukraine out, remember he offered him a ride. Let's get you out of the way, this will be such a bloody terrible war for Ukraine, let’s get you out of the way, and the Ukrainian President said no I’m staying here. The intelligence failure here we have to dive into. Because even if there were certain aspects of an intelligence analysis that said well the Russians aren’t up to what they once were and maybe this will be an even-handed war. If there was intelligence like that, that information did not leak out in the media. The media did a group think absolutely across the board talking about these leaks from intelligence agencies that Ukraine would get defeated in a couple of days. . . . The latest on groupthink on intelligence issues from the Washington D.C. press corps; . . . they are now saying the same thing, that Putin is mad at the underlings at his defense department, that they didn’t give him the right information and he didn’t realize they were losing. All of this is just leaks for partisan purposes. I am very uncomfortable with it, the media needs to be more skeptical.

We’ve taken action because we are indeed skeptical about all of this. So, we’ve filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request over the Biden Administration abandoning Israel and propping up Iran. ACLJ Senior Counsel Andy Ekonomou explained what we are requesting in these FOIA’s:

The Biden Administration . . .  is offering a million dollars for groups to investigate alleged human abuse rights by Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip –  a clear effort to delegitimize Israel. In other words, the Department of Human Rights and Labor of your State Department is soliciting nonprofit groups to apply for grant money up to $987,000 dollars to “strengthen accountability and human rights in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza,” so what we said is oh really, you’re asking for groups to come in and get a grant for 1 million dollars? So, we just submitted a new FOIA request to the Department of State asking for all records pertaining to this crazy program and how the decision to incentivize Israel’s accusers was made going back to January 1, 2021 and what date is that folks? The date of President Biden’s inauguration. The first thing he did was put Israel into the political crossfires. That’s the one FOIA requests we have filed.

We’ve also filed another one . . . , a new one with the Office of Information Programs of the State Department requesting we want to know all of the records pertaining to the Department of State’s knowledge and efforts . . .  to remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from the foreign terrorist organization list.

Closer to home, we are also working on a huge pro-life case representing South Dakota and Governor Kristi Noem over providing critical informed consent to a woman before she gets an abortion. ACLJ Senior Counsel CeCe Heil joined Sekulow to discuss this case:

Planned Parenthood is never going to miss an opportunity to attack that. We see them attack issues as just common sense as if you want sterile surgical instruments in an abortion clinic, they will fight against that. So, of course they will fight against third party counseling to make sure a woman has complete informed consent before she makes what I would say one of the most important decisions of her life, whether she is going to kill her baby that she is carrying. She needs to know. In any medical procedure, you need to know all of the potential risks and all of the options. And we have overwhelming evidence that Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide that.

At the ACLJ we are able to work on all of these critical issues because of the support of our ACLJ members. We will keep you updated on these cases and provide you updates as they come.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of Dan Shapiro walking away from the Iran nuclear deal and an update on our cases at home.

Watch the full broadcast below.