Jewish groups downplay Jewish angle on Iran

By Chanan Tigay

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NEW YORK (JTA)—With concern mounting over Iran's atomic ambitions, the American Jewish community is lobbying intensively to ensure that the threat is taken seriously by the United States, the media and the world.
Careful to avoid giving the impression that it's primarily
an issue of Jewish or Israeli
concern, however, U.S. Jewish groups are taking pains to highlight the greater regional and global threats posed by a nuclear Iran and its Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"We have to mobilize public opinion in this country and around the word to understand the serious threat that this represents," Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations, told JTA.

Iran is "the fulcrum of the international terrorist movement, not only though Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which they aid, but terrorist groups around the world—including in the United States and Europe."
The American Jewish Committee bought ads last month in The New York Times, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune and New York Sun, asking, "Suppose Iran one day gives nuclear devices to terrorists. Could anyone anywhere feel safe?"
The idea, said David Harris, the American Jewish Committee's executive director, was
"to make sure that the global threat was understood, as opposed only to the Israel dimension."
On May 9, the head of Israel's military intelligence unit, Amos Yadlin, said that, absent sanctions, Iran would attain nuclear weapons by 2010.
According to reports, Iran already has procured North Korean missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads as far as Israel and parts of Europe. The Bush administration has said it will not tolerate a nuclear Iran, a sentiment recently echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
When Ahmadinejad "says that he wants to destroy Israel, the world needs to take it seriously," Bush said in an interview with German weekly Bild am Sonntag.
"This is a serious threat, aimed at an ally of the United States and Germany. What Ahmadinejad also means is that if he is ready to destroy one country, then he would also be ready to destroy others. This is a threat that needs to be dealt with."
The foreign ministers of several key Security Council members met May 8 to discuss a proposed U.N. resolution to brake Iran's nuclear program, but did not reach consensus.
Russia and China still oppose including any mention of sanctions or possible military intervention in the resolution, which is being sponsored by Britain and France and backed by the United States.
Hoenlein said the Presidents Conference is deliberately taking a quiet approach to its lobbying on Iran.
"This is an area where, I think, we do not want this to be seen as a Jewish issue; it's not," he said. "This is a danger for America, for the world. Therefore, I think the low-visibility but intensive approach is appropriate."
"We're not against protests or American Jews expressing themselves on this," Hoenlein added, "but it shouldn't be exclusively Jews."