<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> WorldTribune.com: Mobile — Democrats quietly defeat resolution authorizing Iran blockade
Democrats quietly defeat resolution authorizing Iran blockade

Monday, October 20, 2008 Free Headline Alerts

WASHINGTON — The Democratic majority has shelved a congressional resolution that called on President George Bush to impose a naval blockade on Iran in an effort to halt its nuclear weapons program.

The resolution, introduced in May 2008, was supported by more than 200 co-sponsors but was blocked by opponents of U.S. policy in Iraq and shelved late last month.

Congressional Resolution 362 called on Bush to increase pressure on the regime in Teheran. The resolution demanded a ban on gasoline exports to Iran as well as "imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran."

"I am not willing to leave even the slightest crack open for this president to unilaterally set this nation down another disastrous path of war in Iran," Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat and members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said.

"This should not be our policy, and I regret the fact that I did not read this resolution more carefully," House Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank, a co-sponsor of the resolution, said.

Lobbyists opposing the resolution included pro-Iranian activists who asserted that the resolution could lead to a U.S. war against Iran.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) strongly supported Resolution 362.

Congressional sources said the defeat of the resolution marked increasing American reluctance to confront Iran. The sources said opposition could increase amid the global credit crisis.

"The next president needs to reorient U.S. policy toward Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon did with China in the 1970s," former National Security Council official Flynt Leverett said.

Leverett published a study with his wife, Hillary Mann, that argued that Washington's policy against Iran has ended up hurting U.S. interests. He called on the next U.S. administration to reach a "grand bargain" with Teheran.

"Pursuing a U.S.-Iranian grand bargain should start with the definition of a strategic framework for improving relations between the United States and the Islamic Republic," the study said. "Iran's security interests, including extending U.S. security assurances to the Islamic republic, lifting unilateral U.S. and multilateral sanctions against Iran, and acknowledging the Islamic Republic's place in the regional and international order."

The study came amid reports that Iran was accelerating its nuclear weapons program. The International Atomic Energy Agency has been investigating reports that a Russian scientist was helping Iran develop methods of detonating a nuclear warhead.

"The next [U.S.] president will inherit an American policy in profound disarray," Ilan Berman, a leading U.S. strategist, wrote in the Journal of International Security Affairs. "For all of its talk to the contrary, the Bush administration now gives every indication of leaving office without having taken resolute action to prevent the emergence of an atomic Iran."

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