Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., urged his Republican and Democratic colleagues to swiftly enact tough sanctions against Iran before the end of the 2008 legislative session.

In remarks made on the Senate floor Monday, Dodd called for bipartisan support for the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act of 2008, a bill Dodd co-sponsored with Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama.

The bill was introduced Aug. 1. It aims to “impose sanctions with respect to Iran, to provide for the divestment of assets in Iran by State and local governments and other entities, to identify locations of concern with respect to transshipment, reexportation, or diversion of certain sensitive items to Iran, and for other purposes.”

Last week, Dodd and Shelby submitted the bill as an amendment to the fiscal year 2009 National Defense Authorization Act.

Carah Ong, an Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation, wrote about the Dodd/Shelby measure Wednesday at her blog, Iran Nuclear Watch.

For the past year, Democrats have been aggressively pursuing ways in which they could respond to the threat they believe Iran poses to the United States due to the country’s ongoing uranium enrichment activities. 

In May, Congressman Gary Ackerman, D-NY, introduced H. Con. Res 362, a controversial piece of legislation against Iran which policy analysts, and military experts believed, if passed, would constitute an act of war.

H. Con. Res. 362 “demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program.”

The measure has more than 200 sponsors and is still attracting widespread support from both parties. In July, three retired military officials urged Congress to abandon its support for H. Con Res 362 stating that the measure is “poorly conceived, poorly timed, and potentially dangerous.”

“The language demanding the President initiate an international effort “prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran,” is of particular concern because despite the protestations of its sponsors, we believe that implementation of inspections of this nature could not be accomplished without a blockade or the use of force,” said the July 10 letter signed by U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb, and U.S. Army Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr., currently the chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

They added that Ackerman and his Republican co-sponsor, Congressman Mike Pence, R-Ind., had drafted the resolution in such a way that “immense military resources would be required to implement such inspections of cargo moving through the seas, on the ground, and in the air.”

Scott Ritter, the former United Nations chief weapons inspector in Iraq, has been keeping a watchful eye on U.S./Iranian policy. Ritter has been highly critical of how Congress has been dealing with Iran and the way in which lawmakers have characterized an International Atomic Energy Agency Report on Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

Ritter said lawmakers have not thoroughly reviewed the report’s findings.

“We have a situation where the IAEA has published several technical reports all of which state there is no evidence Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. None. Zero,” Ritter said in an interview. “Information has been provided to the IAEA by member nations, intelligence information. Now the IAEA has to be very circumspect when it says this but we all know that it’s basically intelligence provided to the agency by the United States of America, a nation openly hostile to Iran, a nation that has a track record of fabricating, exaggerating, and misrepresenting intelligence data. The data that’s been provided to the IAEA has derived from a laptop computer which even the IAEA claims is of questionable providence.”

Ritter said that because the United States has such a dominating role in the United Nations Security Council and in the Board of Governors the IAEA couldn’t ignore the information it receives from the United States about Iran.

“The IAEA acknowledges that what it’s asking Iran to answer has nothing to do with its mandate of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It is related to Security Council resolutions calling for the suspension of uranium and an investigation into a nuclear weapons program but the bottom line is what the IAEA has said is that Iran has not been forthcoming and Iran is saying it’s not their job to answer the CIA’s questions. So the IAEA reports that Iran is not being forthcoming on these issues and now it’s unnamed diplomats, i.e. American and British diplomats, who say they are very concerned because Iran’s refusal to cooperate only reinforces their concern that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

But lawmakers, like Dodd, have not given consideration to Ritter’s analysis.

On Monday, Dodd, speaking on the Senate floor, said the amendment he has proposed “would impose tough new sanctions on the Government of Iran, to authorize investors to divest from companies active in Iran’s energy sector and to combat the proliferation of black market weapons networks overseas.”

“Let me be clear. Sanctions against the Government of Iran are not an end unto themselves but, rather, one means of driving a resolution of the problem of Iran’s apparent nuclear ambitions,” Dodd said. “We only have a few weeks remaining in this legislative session. We will not return to actually legislate until late January of next year. I would hope we would find time, whether on this bill or some other vehicle, to enact, as I am confident we can, with a strong bipartisan vote, this Iran sanctions idea.”

In a post Ong wrote on Iran Nuclear Watch, she said “the most likely vehicle for passing legislation on Iran this year is amendments to must-pass legislation.”

“It is very clear that both Democrats and Republicans are using the Defense Authorization bill as means for politicking and proving their toughness for dealing with Iran, which is proving an important issue in this election cycle,” Ong wrote on Sept. 12. “I will not be surprised if all of the amendments on Iran are considered germane and voted on during the debate of the FY’09 Defense Authorization bill next week.”

Indeed, four Republican Senators introduced four separate amendments to the Defense Authorization Bill in response to the perceived threat Iran poses to the U.S. Ong said the amendments still relies heavily on punitive measures and fails to embrace incentives that could lead to diplomatic solutions.