{"id":360315,"date":"2018-05-09T02:36:43","date_gmt":"2018-05-09T01:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/israel-lobby-calling-the-shots-in-trumps-rollback-policy-on-iran-max-blumenthal-rt-us-news\/"},"modified":"2018-05-09T02:36:43","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T01:36:43","slug":"israel-lobby-calling-the-shots-in-trumps-rollback-policy-on-iran-max-blumenthal-rt-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/israel-lobby-calling-the-shots-in-trumps-rollback-policy-on-iran-max-blumenthal-rt-us-news\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Israel lobby calling the shots in Trump&#8217;s rollback policy on Iran&#8217; \u2013 Max Blumenthal \u2014 RT US News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        President Donald Trump&#8217;s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is a result of a lobbying effort by American Jewish billionaires and recycled, cooked-up intelligence touted by the Israeli PM, journalist Max Blumenthal told RT.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Trump&#8217;s decision to pull the US out of the deal, which capped Iran&#8217;s uranium enrichment in return for economic sanctions relief, has drawn widespread criticism from Washington&#8217;s European allies and Moscow, but it was lauded in Israel, which has long pushed for dismantling of the 2015 accord.<\/p>\n<p>If this doesn&#8217;t speak for itself, Blumenthal told RT that the roots of Trump&#8217;s decision to scrap the deal can be easily traced back to Israel.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Israeli influence is absolutely key here. At least, Trump sided Netanyahu&#8217;s kind of used car salesman style of presentation in order to justify withdrawing from the Iran deal and his new policy of rollback,&#8221;<\/em> the journalist said.<\/p>\n<div class=\"arcticle__read-more read-more\">\n<p>Read more<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"read-more__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/426211-haley-un-bullied-israel\/\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"read-more__cover\" src=\"https:\/\/cdni.rt.com\/files\/2018.05\/thumbnail\/5af23e7cdda4c878678b456d.jpg\" alt=\"US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley at the Americas Society\/Council of the Americas annual conference at the State Department, May 8, 2018. \u00a9 Kevin Lamarque\"\/><br \/>\n    <\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>Taking aim at the bizarre PowerPoint presentation delivered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late last month, Blumenthal pointed out the Israeli leader essentially <em>&#8220;introduced nothing new in his presentation,&#8221;<\/em> adding that<em> &#8220;much of the intelligence&#8221;<\/em> appears to be<em> &#8220;cooked&#8221;<\/em> and stem from the early 2000s.<\/p>\n<p>In 2004, the George W. Bush administration claimed that it had obtained 1,000 pages of technical documentation shedding the light on Iran&#8217;s intentions to produce a nuclear weapon. According to the US officials who spoke to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/13\/world\/middleeast\/relying-on-computer-us-seeks-to-prove-irans-nuclear-aims.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">media<\/a> at the time, the documents came from a<em> &#8220;stolen Iranian laptop,&#8221;<\/em> and not from an anti-government group. However, it was later <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ipsnews.net\/2008\/02\/politics-iran-nuke-laptop-data-came-from-terror-group\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">revealed<\/a> by German intelligence officials that the source of the documents was Iranian resistance group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), which is recognized as terrorist by the US State Department.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;It&#8217;s another intelligence scam driving us to war,&#8221; B<\/em>lumenthal said, calling the intelligence cited by Netanyahu <em>&#8220;arguably fabricated.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Apart from Netanyahu, who has long been advocating the collapse of the internationally recognized agreement, Israeli lobbies within the US greatly contributed to Trump&#8217;s decision to take a more hawkish stance on Iran in line with Israel&#8217;s own, Blumenthal said.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;This triad of likudic billionaires \u2013 [ Home Deport co-founder] Bernard Marcus, [casino magnate] Sheldon Adelson and [hedge fund billionaire] Paul Signer \u2013 contributed over $40 million to pro-Trump Super PACs, and also contributed enormous amount of money to Trump&#8217;s UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Tom Cotton, the senator that shaped Trump&#8217;s Iran policy<\/em>,&#8221; the journalist pointed out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/426213-iran-deal-withdrawal-israeli-lobby\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Donald Trump&#8217;s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is a result of a lobbying effort by American Jewish billionaires and recycled, cooked-up intelligence touted by the Israeli PM, journalist Max Blumenthal told RT. Trump&#8217;s decision to pull the US out of the deal, which capped Iran&#8217;s uranium enrichment in return for economic sanctions relief, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":360316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-360315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}