While J Street is asking for essentially nothing and holding its confab, replete with Iranian regime apologists and boos directed at those who favor sanctions, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee marked up and passed on a voice vote the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act. AIPAC, which strongly supported the measure and is the subject of much of J Street’s venom, was all too happy to circulate the results of its efforts.

Keep in mind that the legislation is permissive — giving Obama (who says he is not ready to talk about sanctions right now, thank you) only the authority to impose sanctions on any entity that provides Iran with refined-petroleum resources or engages in activity that could contribute to Iran’s ability to import such resources. The bill also urges the president to impose sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran and any financial institution engaged in proliferation activities or in support of terrorist groups. A sanctions bill is set to be marked up tomorrow in the Senate Banking Committee. Whether the Obama administration takes advantage of this legislation for any useful purpose is an open question.

So is J Street influential? Not with Congress, which seems to favor measures that J Street despises. It’s wise perhaps then for them to stick to the plain-wrap ”ask” for support for a two-state solution.

It is noteworthy that this bill was spearheaded by Rep. Howard Berman. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out he was one of 17 lawmakers (out of 140 “hosts”) who actually showed up to break bread with the J Street crowd at its conference. Did he not know that the group inveighs against his own legislation? Or is he simply trying to cover his Left flank? His constituents should ask him what he was thinking.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 1:54 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.