Congress must have an entire staff dedicated to the sole purpose of drafting strongly-worded condemnations of Iran. Just last fall they passed a resolution condemning Iran and declaring the Islamic Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group, a resolution condemning Iran for persecuting labor rights activists, and a national defense bill that declared Iran an eventual nuclear threat, just a few months after the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

And Congress is back at it, as if they just won't be satisfied until we add a third war in the Middle East (perhaps they're hoping to save money by just combining the three into one big regional war). Meet H.CON.RES.362, the latest strongly-worded resolution targeting the Iranian regime. It currently has 208 sponsors, coming from both parties.

The text of the bill at least acknowledges the NIE and the fact that Iran suspended its weapons program, but then it quickly moves past that with some hypothetical language ("Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon as soon as late 2009") and concludes with the following action points. Congress:

(1) declares that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, through all appropriate economic, political, and diplomatic means, is vital to the national security interests of the United States and must be dealt with urgently;

(2) urges the President, in the strongest of terms, to immediately use his existing authority to impose sanctions on--

(A) the Central Bank of Iran and any other Iranian bank engaged in proliferation activities or the support of terrorist groups;

(B) international banks which continue to conduct financial transactions with proscribed Iranian banks;

(C) energy companies that have invested $20,000,000 or more in the Iranian petroleum or natural gas sector in any given year since the enactment of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996; and

(D) all companies which continue to do business with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps;

(3) 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; and

(4) urges the President to lead a sustained, serious, and forceful effort at regional diplomacy to support the legitimate governments in the region against Iranian efforts to destabilize them, to reassure our friends and allies that the United States supports them in their resistance to Iranian efforts at hegemony, and to make clear to the Government of Iran that the United States will protect America's vital national security interests in the Middle East.

A similar bill in the Senate includes a final stipulation that the legislation "asserts that nothing in this resolution shall be construed to authorize the use of force against Iran."

Well, that's a relief. I guess Congress favors the poke-Iran-with-a-big-stick-until-we-can-say-they-started-it strategy.