Seth Magaziner (l) and Allan Fung (r)

In the entire New England congressional delegation — the members of Congress spanning Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine — there is a single Republican: Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Rhode Island Republicans are hoping that could change this fall in a political environment expected to be unfavorable to Democrats, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. Ground zero, according to political analysts, is Rhode Island’s 2nd District, an open seat that Democrats are looking to hold onto after Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI) announced his decision not to seek a 12th term. Voters in the district, which includes parts of Providence and the entire western half of the state, go to the polls Tuesday on the last primary election date of the year. 

No contest: The race’s frontrunner, Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, has already turned his attention to the general election by focusing on his sole Republican competitor, former Cranston Mayor Allan Fung. August polling showed Magaziner, the son of top Bill Clinton advisor Ira Magaziner, leading his five Democratic opponents by a wide margin, with 37% of likely voters backing him. His closest competitors, who each garnered 8% in the poll, are progressive Rhode Island state Rep. David Segal and former Obama administration official Sarah Morgenthau, the granddaughter of FDR-era Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. Magaziner has Langevin’s endorsement.

‘Unusually sleepy’: “The race has been unusually sleepy,” said Adam Myers, associate professor of political science at Providence College. Elsewhere in Rhode Island, candidates are battling in several competitive Democratic primaries — in statewide races and in legislative districts, where moderate and progressive Democratic factions are battling for control of the state legislature. “Everybody earlier in the year thought that the [2nd District] race would be a major part of that, or at least the Democratic primary would be,” Myers added. “That just has not turned out to be the case because it appears as though the party rank-and-file has largely unified around Magaziner.” 

Close call: Residents of the 2nd District voted for President Joe Biden by 12 points in 2020, but Republicans view it as a possible pickup opportunity. The National Republican Congressional Committee includes it among the 75 districts it will be targeting this fall. A poll conducted in June by Suffolk and The Boston Globe showed Fung leading Magaziner 44.9% to 38.5% in a head-to-head matchup.

Rhode Island Republican: Fung “has support among independents,” said David Paleologos, who has conducted polling in the district as director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “That tells me that Fung is not just a MAGA Trump candidate or even a strictly Republican candidate. He’s reached across — he’s identified positively by independents in that congressional district, more so than Magaziner is.”

Read the full story here.

A monitoring camera used in Iran stands during a press conference about the current situation in Iran next to Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria on June 09, 2022.

European diplomats expressed “serious doubts” over the weekend that Iran is willing to commit to a new nuclear agreement, the latest blow to the nuclear negotiations after what seemed to be a breakthrough earlier this summer. Following the joint statement by the U.K., Germany and France, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called for a “new agreement.” Iranian state media, meanwhile, teased a new long-range drone that an Iranian military official threatened could hit major Israeli population centers.

Berlin meeting: Lapid, who is in Berlin today, was expected to broach the issue of nuclear talks with top German officials on Monday. A senior Israeli official told Jewish Insider that the goal of the prime minister’s trip is to strengthen his relationship with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and use the momentum to “move the conversation [on Iran] forward,” adding, “The gaps that exist now mean a return to the JCPOA is unlikely and the longer it takes the further we will move away from this deal.” At a press conference with Scholz on Monday, Lapid suggested that the negotiating powers consider new strategies for approaching Iran. “There is another way.” Lapid said. “A better way forward for the Middle East. It is the path of the Abraham Accords and the Negev Forum. A path based on a shared vision for the region. A vision not of war, extremism and terrorism but of peace, tolerance and cooperation.” A senior official said yesterday that Israel does not believe a deal will be reached before the U.S. midterm elections in November, echoing comments made to JI last week by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) days after returning from a trip to Israel. 

What we’re reading: Ambassador Dennis Ross suggests in Foreign Policy that a new Iran deal would delay, but not prevent, the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon. “Although those making this case are willing to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb capability, they fail to see how others in the region are going to respond even as they draw false lessons from the Cold War about the prospect of stability in a nuclear-armed Middle East,” Ross writes. “For example, Israel — which believes a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat to the Jewish state — will become far more likely to launch major military strikes against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure if it sees the United States and others are ready to live with an Iran with nukes. Similarly, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia has declared that if Iran has a nuclear weapons capability, the kingdom will get one as well. Will Egypt and Turkey be far behind?”

Balkan breach: Two months after Albania was first targeted by an Iranian cyberattack believed to be linked to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, Tirana said over the weekend that it was hit by a second attack, this time against one of the country’s border systems. The first attack caused Albania to sever diplomatic ties with Tehran and expel Iranian embassy staff, while the U.S. on Friday announced sanctions against Iran’s Intelligence Ministry and its leader, Esmail Khatib.

In Washington: More than 50 House members, including a handful of Democrats, urged President Joe Biden not to provide entry visas to the Iranian delegation for the upcoming United Nations General Assembly.

Coming up: The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, begins a weeklong meeting of its board of directors today in Vienna.

Aryeh Lightstone, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman’s closest aide, said that the Abraham Accords have “succeeded beyond the imagination of most of the leadership involved” since they were signed two years ago on the White House lawn, he told The Circuit‘s Jonathan H. Ferziger in a recent interview. On the other hand, Lightstone said, he believes an additional five to 10 countries would have normalized relations with Israel had former President Donald Trump won a second term. Lightstone, an ordained rabbi, now hunts for potential Israeli investments as a consultant to Affinity Partners, the Saudi-backed private equity firm started by Jared Kushner. 

New normal: “When [UAE’s] Mubadala invests [$1 billion] in natural gas coming from Israel, it‘s astonishing,” Lightstone, who also served as special envoy for economic normalization in the Middle East, said. “If you were to just say that sentence five years ago, nobody would have believed a single component of that.”

Biggest regret: “The one thing that upsets me greatly was the canceling of the Abraham Fund,” said Lightstone. “If the United States of America could bring all of these entities together and say, we’re going to do this with Israeli technology and Gulf Cooperation Council support, political and otherwise, we could accelerate that. When you’re dealing with a country like Sudan or with parts of Egypt and elsewhere, and these projects take too long, that gives an opportunity for another coup, for another leadership issue. There’s not a lot of patience. The money that the United States stipulated for this was not charity. It was a loan. We were going to make our money back. We were going to be a convenient platform. That’s all we needed to do.”

Rapid fire: Lightstone recently wrote a book about his diplomatic experiences titled Let My People Know: The Incredible Story of Middle East Peace – and What Lies Ahead, published by Encounter Books. “Every waking moment of that job was a thrill of a lifetime,” he told The Circuit. “It was like shooting fish in a barrel.”

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