The way to prevent the Iranian regime from buying itself more time and securing enough funds to rebuild its nuclear program is to “double down on secondary sanctions, with shipping, so they can’t do their illicit oil sales,” according to Sandra Hagee Parker, chair of the CUFI Action Fund.
“Now that they have been brought to their knees, we must put their face to the pavement,” Hagee Parker told JNS. “Now is not the time to let up off the gas.”
On Tuesday, thousands of attendees of Christians United for Israel’s 20th annual Washington Summit went to Capitol Hill to lobby. (Hagee Parker’s father, Pastor John Hagee, is founder and chairman of CUFI.)
“We know that Israel’s security is our security. We know that Israel’s success is our success,” Hagee Parker told JNS. “As a result, we are going to be advocating for the extension of several funding deadlines and the increase of several funding budgets to make cooperatives with the nation of Israel regarding quantum drones, unmanned aircraft, the future of AI and military warfare.”
CUFI members are also lobbying on the Hill in support of American Jews, including college students, according to Hagee Parker. “You do not have to be Jewish to be a target of antisemitism,” she told JNS, noting that one of the two Israeli embassy staffers killed outside a Jewish event in Washington was Christian.
The CUFI meetings on the Hill followed two days of speeches at the conference and are organized by CUFI Action Fund, the nonprofit legislative advocacy arm of CUFI.
Hagee Parker told JNS that the nonprofit is also advocating on the Hill for passage of the Iran Sanctions Enforcement Act, which has bipartisan sponsorship in both the House and Senate. It is also focused on the United States-Israel Future of Warfare Act, which would create an annual $50 million fund for the fiscal years 2024 to 2028.
CUFI is also pushing for the codification of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred, which the Trump administration adopted via executive order.
“It is time for this to become a law,” Hagee Parker told JNS. “You cannot defeat what you are unwilling to define.”
“At a time when we have the presidents of the most prestigious universities in the United States of America saying that calling for the genocide of Jews is context-dependent as to whether or not it violates a code of conduct, then we have lost ourselves,” she said.
The Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would codify the IHRA definition, is stalled in both houses of Congress, with Democrats and Republicans seeking to add amendments that the other side sees as anathema.
“Jews are hiding in the libraries of their schools and meanwhile, the brightest minds in the nation don’t know what antisemitism is. Give them the tools to do it,” Hagee Parker told JNS.
CUFI Action Fund is also focused on increasing funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which Jewish groups say was severely underfunded in the most recently passed budget. The grant is used to secure synagogues, Jewish schools and institutions, as well as other religious facilities.
‘Bad strategy’
A small yet significant faction of the Republican Party opposes U.S. involvement, including military funding, in foreign matters. CUFI is adamant in its messaging that isolationism doesn’t work in practice.
“Why would America isolate? Iran is not isolating. They’re working with Russia. They’re working with China. Why would we isolate?” Hagee Parker told JNS.
“Forget religion. Let’s just talk about it rationally as a strategy. It’s a bad strategy,” she said. “History has shown us that it doesn’t work. History has shown us that appeasement fails.”
Members of Congress ought to recognize the urgency of CUFI’s advocacy even as the body deals with the pressures of passing U.S. President Donald Trump’s tax, border and defense agenda, wrapped into the so-called “big beautiful bill,” which the president wants to see pass by Friday.
“I think members of Congress are very interested in winning re-election, and so I think that when they see thousands of members of Christians United for Israel, that just represent a very small portion of our membership at large, that they will listen to us,” she told JNS.
The members will do so “not necessarily because they agree with us, but because we are a force to be reckoned with,” she said. “We hope that they can be compelled to do what we are asking, because it is the right thing to do.”
“Even if they do not agree with it, so long as they make the right decision by Israel, then we’re fine with it,” she said.