Howard Berman likes to joke that he became a Zionist before he became a Democrat. Aside from the moment when he learned that president Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died, the 67-year-old congressman's earliest political memory is of being at a rally at a Los Angeles stadium celebrating the birth of Israel in 1948.

Howard Berman
Photo: Courtesy

Today, as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he's in a position to do more than wave flags and cheer. He has the helm of one of the most powerful bodies shaping US foreign policy, and he says his decision to run for Congress and focus on international relations while in office was intimately connected to his Jewish background and ties to the Jewish state.

"Israel's security and the US-Israeli relationship is for me an issue that shapes my whole agenda [in] Congress, and guides it," he told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office.

That office, with its mammoth world map along one wall and National Jewish Democratic Coalition humanitarian award and Vladimir Putin matryoshka doll mixed in with the family photos, is one Berman assumed just this February after a quarter-century of service in Congress. In addition to serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee and getting through such legislation as that authorizing embargoes on countries supporting terrorism, Berman, a lawyer by training, has served on the Judiciary Committee and headed a subcommittee dealing with intellectual property rights.

He has now slipped into the large shoes of Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the US House of Representatives, after he died from cancer in February. Lantos projected an international air as he strode the world stage championing human rights; the dignitaries at his Capitol memorial service included Tzipi Livni, Elie Wiesel and Bono. Berman, in contrast, seems as suited for a history department as a congressional committee chairmanship. "He combined a real passion with a tremendous eloquence," the Associated Press quoted Berman saying of Lantos. "That's just not my strong suit. I'm more of an inside animal."

If his careful sentence construction, curly gray-white hair and unassuming manner make him seem professorial, it's a look that's not deceiving, according to those who work with him - they praise him for being smart and genial. And he was politically shrewd enough to endorse Barack Obama, despite Hillary Clinton's strong appeal in the Jewish community and her primary victory in California, where his own voters reside.

Despite the differences Obama is trying to emphasize between himself and President George W. Bush, Berman, a liberal by inclination, doesn't hesitate to call the commander-in-chief a sincere supporter of Israel who has many of the same goals internationally - especially when it comes to stopping the Iranian nuclear threat - that he does. He just thinks that a Democratic administration would be more effective in realizing them. "I share this administration's goals," he says, "but I'm interested in achieving them, not just in making rhetorical statements about them."

What's your assessment of America's current Iran policy?

Iran, of all the many compelling issues out there right now, should be our top priority. I think it is quite unacceptable to have Iran as a nuclear weapons capable state, and our policy should be focused on stopping that from happening. But our current policy is not working. Iran continues to enrich uranium. The level of multilateral sanctions increases by very minor increments in a fashion that is not going to provide the kind of economic pressure on Iran to change its behavior.

We've had a total embargo on Iran, unilaterally since 1979 or 1980, but we've never imposed a sanction under ILSA [the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act] on any companies investing in Iran's energy sector. Our unilateral currency regulations are the most positive thing we've done, but even that Iran has figured out ways to circumvent. And so nothing we've done [until] now is seriously working toward achieving the goal. It's time to rethink what we're doing and how we're approaching this.

What should be done?

I believe there's a level of economic sanctions that would force Iran to change its position here. You don't even have to go to prohibiting anyone from buying their oil. You could embargo refined oil products coming back to Iran. You could massively cut the level of bilateral trade with a number of key countries, particularly European countries, which are dealing with them. You could create major, clear threats on a multilateral basis [so that] Iran knows what's coming, and the question is what are we doing to try to reach that point. The implication is, not much.

What specifically do you think has been flawed in the approach so far?

There are many different reasons in many different places... Let's take Russia for example. Are we prioritizing this goal in our bilateral relationships with the Russians? I don't think so. It's one of the issues in the relationship, and by this I don't simply mean Russia's proliferation to Iran, where there have been some positive steps. I mean Russia's willingness to impose the draconian sanctions that could force a change in behavior. I don't think we've prioritized this in our relationship with Russia.

We have many different issues, and they seem to all be in some ways of equal importance. We pushed the deployment of a partial missile defense system, which angers the Russians, in order to increase the possibility that we can intercept a nuclear-tipped missile - a threat that is real, but down the road in some ways, when the goal should be keeping Iran from having the ability to have a nuclear-tipped missile. And I also find it very interesting that we've entered into an nuclear cooperation with Russia to enhance our work with them on a number of nuclear energy and other issues without Russia having joined as a partner in this sanctions effort.

I just think the administration hasn't prioritized. They haven't. And I have to tell you, my guess is that the key to getting a common approach of European, Russian, Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Gulf countries, which I think is much more likely to make the Iranians think, may be a willingness on our part to deal with other issues we have with Iran. This administration has subcontracted the negotiations, the discussions with Iran, to the Europeans, and has insisted on a precondition - you must suspend your uranium enrichment. And for more than three years they've been enriching uranium while we say, before we ever deal with anything else, you have to stop enriching uranium. It ain't working.