Republican, Democrat agree on Iran plan

Two ranking U.S. lawmakers -- a Democrat and a Republican -- said both houses of Congress are committed to supporting Israel and that the United States should keep "all options on the table" when dealing with Israel's hostile neighbor, Iran.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-Westchester), ranking Democrat in the state and foreign operations subcommittee of the House appropriations committee and Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), chief deputy majority whip and a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, discussed the U.S.-Israeli relationship during a roundtable discussion in Manhattan last week.

They also agreed that the main impediments to peace between Israelis and Palestinians is the growing intimacy between Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party and the Iran-backed Hamas, as well as Abbas' recent bid to seek statehood for his people through the United Nations instead of through direct talks.

Their wide-ranging discussion Friday was sponsored by The Israel Project, a nonprofit organization that seeks to inform policy makers, journalists and the public about issues concerning Israel.

"The Israel-U.S. relationship has always been bipartisan," said Lowey, describing the support Israel enjoys on both sides of the aisle in Congress. "In my judgment, it is key that it stays bipartisan."

Roskam, who represents several Chicago suburbs, said near-unanimous support for an amendment that would impose sanctions against financial institutions doing business with the Central Bank of Iran is perhaps the best evidence of Congress' resolve.

The Kirk-Menendez amendment to the fiscal 2012 defense authorization was approved 100 to 0 in the Senate early this month, and a similar measure drafted by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) is being co-sponsored in the House by at least 340 lawmakers, Roskam said.

The House bill has note been voted on but, Lowey said, she expects near-unanimous support for it.

"There is an incredibly strong supportive relationship in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate," he said. "You cannot get 100 U.S. senators to agree on anything controversial with the exception of 100 U.S. senators all came together and said we need to be moving in this direction as it relates to the Central Bank of Iran."

He added: "The question is really a threshold question, and that is: How do we continue to build as Nita said, on a strong bipartisan consensus? That is that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is to be valued, is to be invested in, is to defended and is to be advocated."

The pending legislation comes as the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency produced a report suggesting Iran had not abandoned a drive to seek a nuclear bomb.

"I think we have to be serious and sanctions dealing with the Central Bank are essential," she said, pounding the table as she spoke. "It is unacceptable that they produce a nuclear weapons and I think this has to be unequivocal and every action has to be taken."

On Palestine, Lowey chided Abbas for delivering a speech at the United Nations in September that she called "incendiary," adding that peace eludes the two nations as long as they decline to engage in direct talks.

Roskam agreed and said that in his three visits to Israel since 2006, he has seen a marked lack of will to negotiate on the part of Palestinians and that the alliance with Hamas has all but prevented fruitful talks.

"Each time, the sense I got was that there was no one there for the Israelis to negotiate with," he said. "The sincere sense I got interacting with Israelis was we want to sit down and we want to have peace but in order to have peace you have to have someone at the other side of the table and I think when the Palestinian Authority made the decision to enter a coalition government with Hamas . . . it's irreconcilable."

Added Lowey, "When it comes to Hamas, we have very tough language . . . Unless they accept the existence of the Jewish state of Israel, there can be no discussion with Hamas."