Biden’s Jewish outreach coordinator: He’ll return to the Iran deal

Keyak said Biden would bring Iran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

Aaron Keyak, the Biden campaign’s director for Jewish engagement, said the Democratic presidential candidate will return the U.S. to the 2015 nuclear deal during a virtual meeting on Tuesday hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

The title of the meeting was “The Jewish Vote: Why Jewish voters will support Joe Biden.”

Keyak said Biden would bring Iran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Biden will “verifiably prevent a nuclear-armed Iran and find verifiable ways to ensure that it doesn’t happen in the long-termת” Keyak said.

Biden’s pointman to U.S. Jewry also slammed President Donald Trump for leaving the agreement.

“It is hard to draw up a more disastrous policy than the one president Trump has executed,” he said.

“He tore up a deal with Iran that was working to prevent that country from obtaining nuclear weapons… He went out of his way to actively infuriate our allies in Europe and throughout the world,” he said.

Keyak suggested the only reason Trump left the agreement was because it was working “and he couldn’t stand it. So he tore it up.”

Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal on May 8, 2018.

“This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” Trump said. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly opposed the Iran nuclear deal. In July 2015, he denounced it as a “historic mistake,” saying “the Islamic state of Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons” as a result.

Netanyahu also said: “In the coming decade, the deal will reward Iran, the terrorist regime in Tehran, with hundreds of billions of dollars. This cash bonanza will fuel Iran’s terrorism worldwide, its aggression in the region and its efforts to destroy Israel, which are ongoing.”

In promising a return to the deal, Biden will potentially be setting up a renewed confrontation with Israel over the agreement as happened during the Obama administration.

Keyak’s remarks were in line with the official position of the Biden campaign.

A Biden facts sheet page on the website of the Jewish Democratic Council of America says he will “rejoin a diplomatic agreement to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, if Iran returns to compliance with the JCPOA, using renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend the Iran deal, and push back against Iran’s other destabilizing actions.”

Keyak was appointed to his position last month. He served as communications director and Middle East policy adviser for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and organized a media outreach group in 2012 to encourage the Jewish vote for Barack Obama’s campaign in Florida.

IranJCPOAJoe BidenJoint Comprehensive Plan of Action