http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=13515
In a significant and highly
unusual defeat for the so-called "Israel Lobby," the Democratic
leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to shelve a
long-pending, albeit nonbinding, resolution that called for President George W.
Bush to launch what critics called a blockade against Iran.
House Congressional
Resolution (HR) 362, whose passage the powerful American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) had made its top legislative priority this year, had been
poised to pass virtually by acclamation last summer.
But an unexpectedly strong
lobbying effort by a number of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American,
peace, and church groups effectively derailed the initiative, although AIPAC
and its supporters said they would try to revive it next year or if Congress
returns to
Congress, which may still
adopt a package of new unilateral economic sanctions against
''We'll resubmit it when
Congress comes back, and we'll have even more signatures,'' the resolution's
main author, New York Democrat Rep.
Gary Ackerman, told the
Washington Times, adding that the resolution currently has 270 co-sponsors, or
some two-thirds of the House's entire membership.
Still, the decision by the
chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, to shelve
HR 362 marked an unusual defeat for AIPAC, according to its critics who charged
that the resolution was designed to lay the groundwork for the Bush
administration or any successor administration to take military action against
"This was a joint
effort by several groups to really put the focus on the dangers presented by
such a resolution over the opposition of one of the most powerful lobbies in
the country," said Trita Parsi,
president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
Among other provisions, the
resolution declared that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons
capacity was "vital to the national security interests of the United
States" – language that is normally used to justify military action – and
"demand(ed) that the President initiate an international effort to
immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political and diplomatic
pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment
activities..."
Among the means it called
for were "prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum
products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles,
ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the
international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the
suspension of Iran's nuclear program."
Although the resolution's
sponsors explicitly denied it – indeed, one clause stated that "nothing in
this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force
against
"Ambiguity in the text
of the resolution – whether intended by its drafters or not – has led some to
see it as a de-facto approval for a land, air and sea blockade of Iran, any of
which could be considered an act of war," according to Deborah DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now (APN), a
Zionist group that has long urged the administration to engage in direct talks
with Tehran and that lobbied against the resolution.
Two key Democratic
congressmen, who had initially co-sponsored the resolution, Reps. Robert Wexler
and Barney Frank, unexpectedly defected in July, insisting that its language be
changed to exclude any possibility that it could be used to justify war against
The resolution was
introduced last May, shortly after AIPAC's annual
meeting during which then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert reportedly told the House Democratic leadership,
including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Berman, and Ackerman that economic sanctions
against Iran had run their course and that stronger action, including a
possible naval quarantine, was needed to increase pressure on Tehran to halt
its nuclear program.
The meeting also followed
talks between Olmert and Bush who, despite an
strongly hawkish speech before Israel's Knesset, privately told his hosts that
Washington would almost certainly not attack on Iranian nuclear facilities nor
give a green light Israel to launch an attack of its own before he leaves
office in January 2009, according to a recent account by London's Guardian
newspaper. The administration itself never took a position on the resolution.
At the time, the price of
oil was skyrocketing, and the military brass in the Pentagon, increasingly
concerned about the deteriorating situations in
Nonetheless, AIPAC pushed
hard for adoption of the resolution, even as it, like its Congressional
sponsors, insisted that it was not designed to justify military action.
Just last week, in a final
push for the resolution's passage, AIPAC drafted a letter that was circulated
to House members who had not yet co-sponsored the resolution. While it
denounced as "utter nonsense"
suggestions that the resolution could
be used to justify military action, the text also stressed that
AIPAC's failure was particularly
notable given the presence at the UN General Assembly in New York this week of
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose repeated
and predictably provocative predictions about the demise of Israel and
"the American empire" have been used routinely by AIPAC to rally
public and elite opinion against Tehran and underline the threat it allegedly
poses.
In announcing that the
resolution has been shelved, Berman said he shared critics' concerns about the
resolution's wording and will not bring it before his committee until his
concerns were addressed. "If Congress is to make a statement of policy, it
should encompass a strategy on how to gain consensus on multilateral sanctions
to change
(Inter Press Service)