Senate Vote on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard: An Authorization for What?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
During the debate of Democratic presidential contenders the other night, John Edwards said according to the debate transcript the following: “…there was a very important vote cast in the United States Senate today. And it was basically in a resolution calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. I voted for this war in Iraq and I was wrong to vote for this war and I accept responsibility for that. Senator Clinton also voted for this war. We learned a very different lesson from that.

I have no intention of giving George Bush the authority to take the first step on a road to war with Iran. And I think that vote today, which Senator Biden and Senator Dodd voted against, and they were correct to vote against it, is a clear indication of the approach that all of us would take with the situation in Iran. Because what I learned in my vote on Iraq was, you cannot give this president the authority and you can't even give him the first step in that authority, because he cannot be trusted. And that resolution that was voted on today was a very clear indication …"

A few hours before the debate, the Senate had indeed adopted 76-22 a resolution that urged the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, an elite special force, as terrorist organization. Although this move was intended by the White House one way or the other, Senators Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut) sponsored a measure that will strengthen the president’s and, more important, the vice-president’s hand in dealing with one part of the axis of evil: Iran.As David Bromwich writes in the Huffington Post,

The original draft of Kyl-Lieberman had asked U.S. forces to "combat, contain, and roll back" the Iranian menace within Iraq. But the words "roll back" were all too plainly a coded endorsement of hot pursuit into Iran; and the senators did not want to go quite so far. To assure a larger majority the language was accordingly trimmed and blurred to say "that it should be the policy of the United States to stop inside Iraq the violent activities and destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies."

In spite of the changed wording, two Republicans (Hagel and Luger), 19 Democrats (Biden, Bingaman, Boxer, Brown, Byrd, Cantrell, Dodd, Feingold, Harkin, Inouye, Kennedy, Kerry, Klobuchar, Leahy, Lincoln, McCaskill, Tester, Webb, and Wyden), and one Independent (Sanders) voted “no.” And, yes, Senator Hillary Clinton cast her vote in favor and opened her up for criticism that will likely not stop with Edwards’ harsh words. What about the other top contender for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party? Senator Barack Obama missed another vote, and an important one at that.

Besides demonstrating that a large majority of Senators are strongly in favor of declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a foreign terrorist organization like Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and many other groups, this was a completely unnecessary exercise in the upper chamber. As I have pointed out in an earlier post, since Iran is rightly designated a state sponsor of terrorism and the Revolutionary Guard Corps is an important part of Iran’s military, there is no practical reason for declaring the Corps a terrorist group. The sanctions put in place against Iran, the state sponsor, can be applied to entities within Iran.

If, as John Edwards suspects, this non-binding resolution will enable Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to take the first step towards a military conflict with Iran, it could become as important as the Iraq War “authorization.” Perhaps, that is why 22 members voted against the resolution.

Comments

[Tony]

Where I live, it's difficult to have a discussion about these topics. So I wind up talking to myself. In this instance, apart from the reminder to the American citizenry that there are still plenty of terrorists to go after, (stoking the fire), it's a great tactic to further divide the Dem candidates, and use their reactions against them. Tomorrow, we'll be back to Myanmar. The "Shock Doctrine" by Klein should be the #1 seller now, not that apologia by Greenspan. Oh well........