Senator Schmitt Statement on Nomination of Jack Lew to be Ambassador to Israel

WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Eric Schmitt released a statement on Biden’s nominee, Jack Lew, to be Ambassador to Isarel as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee considers his nomination:

“Jack Lew is simply not the right person to be America’s ambassador to our longtime and strong ally, Israel. Lew was the architect of the failed and dangerous Iran Nuclear Deal. Iran is the world’s number one state-sponsor of terrorism and the primary funder of Hamas terrorism – we don’t need a soft-on-Iran ambassador to Israel. Biden and Lew both have capitulated to Iran in the past – this fact alone should immediately disqualify him,” said Senator Eric Schmitt.

BACKGROUND:

• As one of the architects of the Iran Nuclear Deal, Jack Lew not only coordinated the agreement that failed to deliver on its promises, but he went even further and misrepresented its effectiveness.
• In a 2015 speech at the Jerusalem Post’s Annual Conference, Lew made several promising remarks that were hollow and misleading.
  • Lew’s deal included lax oversight at Iran’s “Parchin” facility, which is suspected of continuing military focused research on technologies critical to the execution of an Iranian nuclear missile.
  • He also said, “If we reach an agreement and Iran ends up flouting its obligations, we will know, and we will have preserved all our options…to make sure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon.”
    • Now, we categorically know that Iran did not halt or scale back its nuclear program, the Iranians did not keep their commitments, and most importantly, Lew and his Iran Nuclear Deal empowered Iran to continue to enrich uranium and gain critical expertise in creating weapon’s grade uranium—a crucial ingredient in a nuclear bomb.
• In 2018, a Senate report by the investigative subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found that Lew, during his tenure as secretary to the Treasury under the Obama administration, “granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system.”  
• The report found that the administration tried to convert $5.7 billion from U.S. banks to Iranian assets. It noted that the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control “encouraged two U.S. correspondent banks to convert the funds.”
• In 2016, as Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew played an instrumental role in sending Iran $400 million dollars.
• Simply put, Jack Lew’s Iran Nuclear Deal was a massive and unequivocal failure.