Candidates Hop Aboard the Iran Sanctions Bus
WASHINGTON - Last Thursday afternoon, in a tightly packed press room of the U.S. Capitol building, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi stood at the podium and smiled heartily as she pointed to two columns of U.S. postal boxes stacked behind her.
“Since Iran funds death,” she told the crowd, her lobby group — the Israel Project (TIP) — was collecting petitions demanding that economic pressure and sanctions be brought against Iran for its refusal to halt its nuclear programme and its alleged continued support for terrorism. 
The “threat of Iran” and the need to confront the regime has become a mainstream view in the U.S. legislature, attracting support from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike.
As the George W. Bush administration pushes its international allies to back a more rigid sanctions regime against Tehran, lobby groups such as TIP, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the neo-conservative think-tank Centre for Security Policy (CSP) have spearheaded a grassroots campaign to divest in companies that do business with countries that the State Department considers state sponsors of terrorism.
“Terror-free investing is an idea whose time has come,” wrote Frank Gaffney Jr., president of CSP, in a March op-ed in the Washington Times.
TIP “fights the war of words and images” to provide a “more positive public face of Israel,” according to the organisation’s website. Mizrahi’s lobby group may only be three years old, but it has already attracted strong support from high-profile Congressmen such as Senators Evan Bayh of Indiana and Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania, both of whom sit on its board of advisors.
Its success in attracting attention to the ostensible nuclear threat posed by Iran is another demonstration of the power of the Israel lobby to influence U.S. foreign policy and affect the policy debate in Congress. TIP’s press conference was striking for the strong written statements of support issued by more than 13 presidential candidates, including Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“Allowing Iran, a radical theocracy that supports terrorism and openly threatens its neighbours, to acquire nuclear weapons is a risk we cannot take,” said Obama in a statement read aloud to reporters. “All nations need to understand that, while Iran’s most explicit and intolerable threats are aimed at Israel, its conduct threatens all of us.”
Obama recently introduced the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, one of several bills making its way through Congress that calls for stiffer economic sanctions on Iran’s energy industry and countries that do business with Iran.
“We cannot permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. We must also not let go unanswered its state sponsorship of terrorism. We must not stand silent in the face of brutal repression of women and minorities. And we must not tolerate threats to the existence of Israel,” said New York Senator Hillary Clinton.
In her statement, Clinton also plugged her sponsorship of Senate legislation aimed at closing loopholes enabling international corporations to evade sanctions through foreign subsidiaries.
The “Divest Iran” campaign has gained momentum in part as an alternative for lawmakers wary of a direct military confrontation with Iran.
“The record shows diplomacy can be more successful than you think even if they have had a nuclear test,” said Illinois Republican Congressman Marc Kirk. “There is an elegant policy road that exists for us to bring about a peaceful solution.”
Kirk also recently introduced a bill in the House of Representatives aimed at companies and countries that provide gasoline to the regime, effectively resulting in a “quarantine on gasoline sales.”
While Iran is one of the world’s largest exporters of crude oil, the country’s refining capacity is severely limited, and the government has been forced to import about 40 percent of its gasoline from abroad while offering the highest subsidies of gasoline to its citizens in the Middle East.
Most lawmakers in attendance preferred the deliberate ambiguity of leaving the military option “on the table” rather than direct military threats, yet they fiercely condemned Iran and questioned the mental stability of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“The Soviet leadership never called for the U.S. to be wiped off the map, but the Iranian leadership has. And no Soviet leader ever followed the dictates of the 12th Imam,” said Congressman Brad Sherman of California.
While the president of Iran exercises nominal power (the de facto head of the executive branch is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), Ahmadinejad’s pronouncements have raised his political profile while drawing heavy international criticism. In the rhetoric of U.S. lawmakers, he is represented as an unstable religious radical who denies the Holocaust and is “only a couple deviations away from total insanity,” according to Sherman.
“This is our Munich. We need to stand up to Iran and tell them they cannot thumb their noses at world opinion,” said Elliot Engel, a Congressman from New York who also sits on the Israel Project’s board of advisors.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service.
The warmongering of the corporate front-running Dims should suprise no one. Both of them will continue their lies about Iran and the policy of aggressive blunders in the region. If either Clinton or Obama are the Dim candidates we must either boycott the selections or support an alternative candidate. Enough is enough.
The peace contingent in Iran paints a more realistic picture.
Every single naive, uninformed US taxpayer ‘funds death’ by sending without question over 50% of our taxes to the military industrial complex.
Since Israel is our most important ally in the region I would like to know what good they are contributing to the cause. I am not aware of any Israeli soldiers fighting and dying alongside US troops.
These korporatists are palpable liars. Obama, Klintstone, Romney, Giuliani–all the same.
I agree that Iran is probably after nuclear weapons. I DO NOT agree that there is a damned thing we can do about it; even “nuking” them will only delay the process and eventually prove the truth of the old adage “paybacks are hell”. I also DO NOT agree that there’s anything we NEED to do about it. The idea that a nuclear-armed state would let one of its hard-earned weapons get into ANYONE else’s hands is idiocy, if for no other reason than an “accident” might happen with it. Nuclear weapons, as a concept, are useful only as deterrence, and that is why Iran wants them; if you have them you will not be attacked or otherwise messed with. And that is PRECISELY the reason Israel and the US don’t want Iran to have them; they want the option of using military force against Iran to remain open (no other way to get Iran’s oil or force them to quit opposing Israel’s territorial ambitions).
Plus, these DINOs are intentionally and knowingly using a lie: the “wipe Israel off the face of the earth” calumny. Ahmaninejad DID NOT SAY THAT. He said the regime should “disappear from the pages of time”, a passive rather than active statement; and even then, he was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini.
I WILL NOT SUPPORT A LIAR OR A KORPORATIST. Which means, unless something unexpected happens, I’ll be voting Green in ‘08 for the first time since ‘00 …
I’m not surprised as they watch fox news.The saudis have more people killing Americans than iran.Tony
The no caps is my anger.Tony
Although Hillary must be spending big books on her appearance (she looks better), how she can smile while arguing for a dismal future for another nation and its children points to a soul that’s already evacuated her body. I guess politicians really must make some kind of modern deal with the devil/evil to do the things they do. But to keep smiling???
oops.. I am having a bad spelling day! should be big bucks on her looks!
So how much does she pay the hairdresser?
Nothing new or refreshing here.
Clinton/Obama/AIPAC/TIP/CSP.
DLC/neo-con party loyalty
Payday for all the contributions?
Not exactly accurate.Like-minded more like it.
They all butter the same bread.
Netanyahu-types drinking champagne yet?
It’s like they are all adopted his game plan.
Rivals?!Ha!After-March,2008-they’ll be each other’s best friend
Clinton/Obama…I’d bet they’re the DLC-ticket.
Edwards probably already bribed to dropout.
Will he&Kucinich
stick to their gun sand ride it out?or turn supporter
last minute?
Much has been made over Hilary’s gender and Barak’s race. But when it comes to siding with the oppressors, most of our politicians come in only one shade: the color of money. I have heard their hundreds of lame excuses for enabling war and not peace until I am sick. Sadly, they will do nothing to stop this next war against a helpless country, just as they did not stop the last one. I hope that all of you take a good look at the photo (above) of the two smug hypocrits up there with their phony smiles as they pretend they are looking out for the best interests of the American people. Their true colors will soon become evident.
The israeli lobby is a strong as ever. All the AIPAC/TIP members on this forum will jump out at any minute to defend these worms. The only way Iran can survive the ‘western’ onslaught which is imminent is to aquire nuclear weapons. Hopefully they do that soon so they can ptotect their own citizens. Detente is pretty effective.
Such cruelty and avarice! Where could these political hopefuls get such ideas? None of them will be fit for election much less the air they breathe until U.N. Resolution 242 is fully complied with. Meanwhile they are destroying America to get back at a few dead Saudies. What did Jesus say? Oh yes, love your enemies. Save your blood and treasure!
“The Soviet leadership never called for the U.S. to be wiped off the map, but the Iranian leadership has. And no Soviet leader ever followed the dictates of the 12th Imam,” said Congressman Brad Sherman of California.
apparently iran’s (mis)quote to wipe out israel (i know, they never said that) has become the US. israel has become the US…hmmm…
you read stuff like this article and can see the war fever driving this country insane.
the world has had its munich all right, when they failed to resist the US invasion of iraq.
and for those who think we need to put the dimocrats back in power….
Obama, Hillary,.. these are all corporate funded war mongers. No vote for them from me
AIPAC sure is getting its money’s worth. They have lot more dollars than sense if they think that an armageddon is anything but nuts.
Amazing how supposedly intelligent people like Obama and Clinton think they can get away with mouthing blatant falsehoods about non-existent threats by Iran against its neighbors and/or against the US. Former Senator Gravel is correct when he says that no significant change in US foreign policy can be expected from these enthusiastic supporters of US domination of the world through military force. In this increasingly hypothetical “democracy” of ours, when are the American people ever going to be afforded the opportunity to express their views meaningfully (i.e., in the voting booth) on the as-yet-undebated question whether a majority of Americans prefer world rule by endless warfare, to world cooperation (through, say, a democratized United Nations) with other sovereign nations who may have legitimate differences with us?
““Allowing Iran, a radical theocracy that supports terrorism and openly threatens its neighbours, to acquire nuclear weapons is a risk we cannot take,” said Obama in a statement read aloud to reporters.”
Why did you allow Israel, a radical theocracy that terrorizes and occupies its neibours lands, to aquire nuclear weapons, then?
This is reading like a King George I -> Democrat holding pattern -> King George II gameplan.
They’ll bomb Iran back to the stone age, allow a Dimocrat to boost our morale for a term or two, then invade Iran by 2016 or so? If not much sooner?
Wow, last I walked my street there were no militant Iranians. I’ve got no beef against them, and vice-versa. Where’s the angst? Are we supposed to be hating new people now?
Now it it were a petition “. . . demanding that economic pressure and sanctions be brought against the US for its refusal to halt its nuclear programme,” I’d sign on in a heartbeat.