Iran Resolution Shelved in Rare Defeat for "Israel Lobby"?

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 non-binding, 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 Washington for a "lame-duck" session after the November elections.

Congress, which may still adopt a package of new unilateral economic sanctions against Iran -- some of which the administration has already imposed -- over the weekend, is expected to adjourn over the next several days.

''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 Iran. More