A potentially dangerous anti-Iran resolution is flying through Congress on the wings of some of our best-known doves. By the time you read this it may already have passed one or the other house with the all-out support of scores of liberals and progressives including Florida’s Robert Wexler, California’s Henry Waxman and the representative of the district next to where I live in Chicago, Jan Schakowsky.

Known as Concurrent Resolution 362, the nonbinding resolution expresses “the sense of Congress regarding the threat posed to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony…”

The big problem is that a key clause can readily be interpreted as urging a naval blockade of the country, likely in the Hormuz Straits, which would be seen by most of the world as an act of war.

Its sponsors and supporters vigorously deny the language calls for a blockade and they specifically note that it is not an authorization to go to war. Yet it clearly makes the case for hostilities by rehearsing in nearly two dozen “whereases” virtually every complaint ever made against Iran by the Bush administration, particularly the threat posed by the prospect of Iran’s developing a nuclear weapons program, long-range ballistic missiles, the potential harm to Israel and the country’s sponsorship of terrorist groups throughout the Middle East.

It notes that the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate indicates Iran was working on nuclear warheads up to 2003, but fails to mention that the NIE could find no evidence of work on nuclear weaponry since then.

OK. Few rational thinkers trust the denials of Iran’s present leadership—especially in light of its president’s fascist language and not-so-veiled threats against Israel. There is every cause for deep mistrust, particularly regarding Israel. That’s why the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is pressing hard for passage of the resolution and why those progressive Jewish congresspeople are taking the lead in cosponsoring and promoting it.

On the plus side, the resolution calls for serious diplomacy of a kind not usually associated with the Bush Administration, in addition to a series of powerful, legitimate economic sanctions. All well and good. It tells the nation that we liberals ain’t sissies when it comes to flexing our national security muscles.

But here’s where we’re doing Bush’s dirty work for him:

The resolution “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…” (emphasis mine).

It looks mighty like a call for a blockade to me. How can such prohibitions and inspections, particularly of ships, be accomplished without a blockade?

You can take it to the bank that the Bushies will read it that way as soon as they feel it’s time for a warlike action—perhaps sometime prior to the November elections as a help to John McCain. As McCain’s top guy pointed out, a terrorist attack would be a great help to the GOP candidate and a blockade might easily provoke one.

Readers of history will remember a fraudulent little invention of Lyndon Johnson’s called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution back when he wanted to escalate his war against the Vietnamese.

More than half the Senate Democrats voted to invade Iraq; all but one voted for the Patriot Act; many, including Hillary Clinton, voted for another “nonbinding” resolution declaring Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be a terrorist organization.

That last resolution, under the Patriot Act, enables Bush to engage in warfare against the Corps. This resolution is even more bellicose.

When legislative language is open to multiple interpretations, you can bet this administration will choose the ugliest —and the worst part is, liberal and progressive Democrats are the enablers. Small wonder the Naderites and their kin say there’s no difference between the parties.

If you have any doubt that the far right will make the most malign possible interpretation, just think back to last week and the way their Supreme Court justices interpreted the Second Amendment.

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Don Rose, a leading strategist for liberal and progressive causes and candidates, is a regular columnist for The Chicago Daily Observer.