7,000 Rally in Front of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s NYC Office to ‘Stop Iran’

NEW YORK, New York—Demonstrators waving American and Israeli flags gathered in front of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s midtown Manhattan office Tuesday evening to protest her support for the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran.

It was announced at the rally, organized by the Stop Iran Rally Coalition and the Jewish Rapid Response Coalition, that the NYPD were estimating that the crowd numbered 7,000 in size.

At the “Stop Iran” event, presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina spoke of the deal as “the worst in our history.” He was followed by former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who asked “What happened to the party I joined in 1963?”

Also attending the event was former Reagan administration advisor and Iran watcher Michael Ledeen, who reminded the crowd that the Soviet Union was destroyed by America’s support for the Eastern Bloc’s dissident movements and argued that the same could be done in Iran.

Sami Steigmann, who as a child was subject to Nazi medical experiments in a concentration camp in Ukraine, reminded the crowd that the world did nothing as the Nazis carried out the Holocaust, and he urged them to ensure that it will never happen again.

Event organizer Jeff Wiesenfeld recounted to the crowd that President Obama convinced New York Congressman Jerry Nadler to support the Iran deal by giving him a ride on Air Force One and a personal letter—prompting Wiesenfeld to recommend that Nadler frame that letter, because it will have as much historical value as the piece of paper British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved at a press conference after the Munich appeasement agreement with Nazi Germany.

The only counter-demostration consisted of a handful of members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect Neturei Karta holding anti-Israel signs and waving the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. There was no violence and no confrontations with police.