At 11th hour, NY rallies on Iran

Just hours before vote-counters determined that opponents of the Iranian nuclear pact would fail to override a presidential veto should the Senate manage to vote against the deal later this month, New Yorkers rallied outside the Midtown Manhattan offices of Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer on Tuesday evening.

Participants praised Schumer for opposing the deal and slammed Gillibrand supporting it.

Speakers included former Connecticut Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman, GOP Presidential hopeful Sen. Lindsey Graham, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, and Boro Park Assemblyman Dov Hikind.

Late Wednesday, AIPAC President Robert Cohen emphasized that although the Senate will not override a presidential veto, “we also know now that once the votes are talled, a bipartisan majority of America’s representatives in Congress will oppose this deal.”

“The battle to prevent a nucler-capable Iran is far from over,” he said. “I’m writing to ask you to keep fighting for a better deal.”

Graham told Tuesday’s rally he would push creative ways to sideline the deal, including defunding the International Atomic Energy Agency until it provides Congress with copies of secret “side deals.” 

Graham repeated fears that Iran would use billions of dollars released to it with the end of sanctions to amp up its support of terror.

“You might as well write a check to Hezbollah,” he said. “You’re crazy to give them the pathway to a bomb.”

He called the deal “the worst miscalculation since Munich.”

Those who fail to oppose the Iran deal “will have to live with the consequences of it for a long time to come, and so will the rest of us,” Lieberman said before the rally, which was MC’d by Jeffrey Wiesenfeld of Great Neck.