„Three weeks after The New York Times Magazine published its profile of deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, in which he describes creating an ‚echo chamber‘ of nongovernmental organizations, nuclear proliferation experts and journalists to sell the Iran nuclear deal, it was revealed a group he cited as disseminating the administration‘s narrative had donated to news outlets to report on the accord, as well as other advocacy groups supporting it.
The Ploughshares Fund, a grant-making foundation dedicated to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, gave the liberal Jewish lobbying organization J Street $576,000 to push the agreement and National Public Radio $100,000 to report on President Barack Obama‘s signature foreign policy initiative and related issues. (…)
In the lead-up to the vote in Congress, J Street undertook a comprehensive campaign to support the landmark pact, and in July 2015 took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times urging Congress to refrain from ‚sabotaging‘ the nuclear agreement. J Street also ran TV ads and built a website to stump for the accord. The group‘s campaign ran in direct contrast to the lobbying by Jerusalem and other pro-Israel organizations, like AIPAC, to convince Congress to thwart the deal.“ (Times of Israel: „Where did Ploughshares get its money to sell the Iran deal?“)