By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff

Likely Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain hammered his probable Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama , Monday for what he said was a naive approach to ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He proposed stiffer sanctions against Tehran if it won’t yield to the international community on its nuclear program.

Obama has called for direct talks with the Iranian regime, an option McCain, R-Ariz., told the annual Washington conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee would be fruitless. “Rather than sitting down unconditionally with the Iranian president or supreme leader in the hope that we can talk sense into them, we must create the real-world pressures that will peacefully but decisively change the path they are on,’’ he told the 7,500 AIPAC delegates from across the country.

McCain was the opening speaker at AIPAC’s annual meeting in the capital. On Wednesday, he will be followed by the two Democratic contenders, frontrunner Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, whose campaign may be winding down after the final primaries of the protracted Democratic campaign on Tuesday.

At stake for all the candidates is the loyalty of Jewish voters, who often judge candidates at least in part by the fervor of their support for the Jewish state. Though McCain was well received, drawing applause more than 30 times during his half-hour speech, he faces an uphill climb among traditionally Democratic Jewish voters.

Even President Bush, a steadfast supporter of Israel, made only marginal headway among Jewish voters, drawing an estimated 24 percent of the Jewish vote in 2004, compared to Democrat John Kerry ’s 76 percent. That was a marginal improvement over 2000 when he won 19 percent against Vice President Al Gore, and his running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman , the first Jew ever to run on a major party’s presidential ticket. They got 79 percent.

Facing such odds, McCain tried to picture Obama as weak on issues vital to Israel’s security and unwilling to confront Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel’s destruction.

Even though Iran is a major oil producer and exporter, it relies heavily on imports of gasoline and other petroleum products for its domestic market. McCain called for sanctions to restrict such imports.

He also called for more financial sanctions against Iran’s leaders and its central bank. And he said individuals, governments and businesses should launch a divestment program, modeled after the effort against South Africa’s apartheid regime a few decades ago.

McCain said Obama’s idea of trying to deal with the regime in Tehran was not new. President Bill Clinton tried it in the 1990s, without success, McCain said. “Even so, we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold idea that somehow nobody has never thought of before.’’

McCain also said that Obama’s plan to start withdrawing large numbers of U.S. forces from Iraq early next year would reverse the military and political progress made there in the past year, and would empower Iran and Al Qaeda. “It’s worth recalling that America’s progress in Iraq is the direct result of the new strategy that Senator Obama opposed,’’ McCain said.

Obama Fires Back

Obama’s campaign quickly fired back against McCain, saying that he advocates sticking to failed Bush administration policies on Iraq and Iran.

“ John McCain stubbornly insists on continuing a dangerous and failed foreign policy that has clearly made the United States and Israel less secure,’’ Obama’s campaign said in a statement.