While the House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at tightening sanctions against Iran, the Democratic House leadership has decided to shelve a much stronger rhetorical measure urging the administration to establish a naval blockade of Iran:

Even though the document would not be a law but a “statement of policy” aimed at preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, the Democratic leadership is worried that it could be viewed by the Bush administration as a green light to use military force against Iran, officials said.

…The draft “demands that the president initiate an international effort” that would impose “stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran.” It would also ban “the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products.”

Though this might not be the final word on the “blockade” option, the abandonment of such legislation proves, yet again, that American appetite for confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program is very low. The blockade– an idea that was reportedly pushed by Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in his last meeting with President Bush– is seen in Jerusalem as one of the last options with which to convince Iran to change course. Some Israeli officials believed–some still believe–that the blockade is an alternative that might be acceptable politically to the next American president. If HR 362, the blockade bill, could have sent a signal that this is a tolerable course of action as far as Congress is concerned, and the abandonment of it sends the opposite sign.

Leaders both In the U.S. and in Israel see a trend that can hardly be reversed: America’s understandable reluctance to attack Iran, and international impotence in applying meaningful sanctions against Iran. The blockade–they thought–might have been the acceptable “third option.” Short of war (although critics of the shelved statement argued that it is a “war resolution”), but tough enough to (maybe) have an impact. One American official even suggested to me that the blockade will be the natural course for an Obama administration. If he wants to be the second Kennedy, the blockade–emulating Kennedy’s stance on Cuba–would be the right way for him to go. That is, if Obama is really serious about stopping Iran’s nuclear race.

In last weekend’s debate, both Obama and John McCain declared, not for the first time, that the U.S. can not “tolerate” a nuclear Iran. But as Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Polity aptly remarked in his post-debate comments: “for all the tough words, neither candidate even hinted that force was an option on the table. Until we convince Iran’s leaders that America will act if need be, they will continue to believe that we will eventually tolerate the nuclear Iran we now declare to be unacceptable.”

Clawson remarked that for all the rhetorical differences between the candidates–Obama supporting more direct dialogue, McCain opposing it–the actual policies they offered were fairly similar: “Both supported reinforced diplomacy as the solution, with strengthened sanctions as the central instrument.”

The problem with such a policy is simple: it is not working, and there’s hardly a chance it ever will. The bill passed this week in the House, as symbolically heart-warming as it might be, can do little to make Iran cave (and it’s not even clear if the Senate will take the time to follow through with it). And even more importantly, it is now clear that the next president will be very busy fixing the economy in the first months of his term, leaving little room and energy for dealing with a threat that is very serious, but is also complicated to explain, and has no immediate impact on the daily lives of the American voter.