With Jewish campaign money more critical than ever and Jewish votes potentially important in a handful of key states, most of the 2008 presidential candidates are trying to carve out pro-Israel positions they can call their own.
Sen. Barak Obama (D-Ill.) has latched on to the burgeoning effort to increase the economic pressure on Iran through divestment. But Obama's strong effort on behalf of a major divestment bill is being thwarted by an unnamed Republican senator - and Obama forces say the real culprit is the Bush White House.
The controversy involves the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2007, which would require companies with more than $20 million invested in Iran's energy industry to divest those funds. The measure would also make it easier for state and local governments to purge their own portfolios of Iran investments.
Obama introduced the House-passed measure earlier this summer and called for quick Senate passage; with congressional sentiment running strong on the Iran issue, that seemed a good bet.
But the legislation has been stalled - according to Senate staffers, by a secret hold by a single Republican senator, probably Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). Those same sources say Shelby got the green light for the hold from the Bush White House, which has quietly expressed concerns about various divestment proposals because of objections from the business community and concerns about their impact on U.S. efforts to toughen European Union Iran policy.
This week Obama staffers were spreading the word about the hold, trying to generate pressure on Republican leaders and on Bush. Their strategy: to flush opponents out into the open with a quick vote, possibly using a new congressional ethics bill to deal with the secret hold.
The big question, according to Jewish sources, is whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) put the Iran bill at the top of his September to-do list?
Most major pro-Israel groups, including the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), are supporting the Iran divestment measure.
UPDATE: I'm actually a little surprised that some of you require an explanation why it's a bad thing to ratchet up rhetoric pressure on Iran at this moment. I'll quote Bruce Baugh over at Yglesias's place which will hopefully provide a more full description of the situation than I did in my post.
What we most need right now with Iran is a reduction of tensions: we need to not do more things that heat up the conflicts now underway, or even that sustain them at their current level. Pushing on Iran is inevitably going to play into the hands of those who want war. Whatever the merits of fresh pressure on Iran on any front might be at a time when we aren't governed by warmongering fools and nut cases, this just isn't the moment.
We've been here before, if folks think back to 2002-3. Every expression of interest in pushing on Iraq, on any front, ended up being used as justification for the war effort. It didn't matter much what the advocates of such pressure thought they were doing - it all became grist for the war party.
So it it's really not rocket science to think that people who would prefer there not be a war with Iran ask themselves something like this: Are the rewards on this so important that they warrant giving encouragement and cover to Bush/Cheney's efforts to start a new Middle East war?
