Obama launches attack on Clinton over Iran

On the fifth anniversary of the Senate's vote to authorize the Iraq war, Barack Obama launched a sustained attack yesterday on Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton for a much more recent vote that he is painting as similarly misguided - to label Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group.

To the frustration of Clinton's foes, polls indicate that many antiwar voters have forgiven the New York senator's vote authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq, even though she has never apologized for it. But the Iran vote last month is making waves among left-wing activists, and Obama, who spoke against the Iraq war as an Illinois state senator, sees a new opportunity to question Clinton's judgment on matters of war and peace.

While other Democrats have criticized Clinton's vote on the Iran resolution, Obama was especially aggressive yesterday in a new online advertisement, an interview on CNN, and an opinion article published in the New Hampshire Union Leader.

"As we learned with the original authorization of the Iraq war - when you give this President a blank check, you can't be surprised when he cashes it," the Illinois senator wrote in the opinion piece. "I strongly differ with Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was the only Democratic presidential candidate to support this reckless amendment."

The nonbinding resolution on the Revolutionary Guard passed on a 76-to-22 vote, winning support from about half the Senate Democrats and nearly all the Republicans. Obama missed the vote while campaigning in New Hampshire; the other senators seeking the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, voted against the measure.

Obama's criticism of Clinton on the resolution was some of his most direct and pointed of the campaign. Some supporters have been frustrated by his reluctance to confront Clinton, but Obama suggested on CNN yesterday that he plans to be more aggressive.

"There's no doubt we are moving into a different phase of the campaign," he said. "The first part of a campaign is to offer some biography and give people a sense of where I've been and what I am about. In this next phase we want to make sure that voters understand that on big issues, like the decision to go into the war in Iraq, I had real differences with the other candidates and that reflects on my judgment."

Clinton strongly defends her vote on the Iran resolution, saying the measure will encourage negotiations with Iran and lead to more effective sanctions against Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons program and its support of insurgents fighting US soldiers in Iraq.

"I believe in applying pressure and sanctions, especially given what they have been doing, as part of a much more comprehensive, intense diplomatic effort," she told the Globe's editorial board Wednesday. She made similar remarks on MSNBC last night.

She called for negotiations with Iran without preconditions, saying the Bush administration's refusal to do so has left the United States in the dark about the motivations of Iranian leaders. "I don't know what, if anything, would come from such negotiations, but I am confident that our failure to engage in them is a terrible miscalculation," she told the Globe.

Clinton said some of the furor over the resolution may be a misunderstanding, because it was modified significantly before it was passed. Two paragraphs were removed - they had said it should be US policy to combat the influence in Iraq of Iran and Hezbollah, and that "all instruments," including military, should be used to do so. A new paragraph quoting Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was added, saying that "all options are on the table, but clearly the diplomatic and economic approach is the one that we are pursuing."

Still, after rivals Mike Gravel and John Edwards criticized her vote during a debate at Dartmouth College later the same day, she signed on as a cosponsor to a different measure introduced days later by Senator Jim Webb of Virginia that would prohibit the president from attacking Iran without authorization from Congress.

She had, in fact, espoused that view as far back as February, when she gave a speech on the Senate floor insisting that the president would have no authority for military action in Iran without congressional approval.

A spokesman for Clinton noted that Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, a high-profile Obama backer who opposed the Iraq war, voted for the Iran resolution.

"It's unfortunate that Senator Obama is abandoning the politics of hope and embracing the same old attack politics even though one of his earliest and most vigorous supporters has said this was not a vote for war," spokesman Phil Singer said in a statement yesterday. "If Senator Obama felt so strongly about this resolution, why didn't he speak out against it or vote against it?"

Obama cosponsored another bill earlier this year to declare the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. But the measure that passed was objectionable, he wrote in the Union Leader, because it included 17 findings about Iran's participation in the violence in Iraq, and deems avoiding Iranian influence in Iraq "a critical national interest" of the United States.

Therefore, he argued, the Bush administration could use the measure to justify an attack on Iran as part of the war already underway in Iraq.

The online ad Obama released yesterday shows images of bombed-out Iraqi cities, Iraqi children with plaintive expressions, and American troops trying to contain the chaos. The narrator says Obama is fighting to end the war "and to prevent history from repeating itself," as the screen shows a headline screaming, "Bush: Headed to war with Iran?"

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.