By Adam Graham-Silverman, CQ Staff

Howard L. Berman of California, who plans to become chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March, is a liberal on most domestic issues.

When it comes to foreign policy, he is hawkishly committed to Israel, a hard-line opponent of radical Islam and a fierce defender of human rights.

In that sense, the panel’s agenda under Berman probably will not stray much from that of his predecessor and fellow Californian, Democrat Tom Lantos, who died of cancer Monday at the age of 80. But Berman’s style is expected to be less blunt than the outspoken Lantos.

Berman, the No. 2 Democrat on the committee, will not be challenged for the seat, according to his chief of staff, Gene Smith. The Democratic Caucus must approve the pick, which is likely to happen after next week’s Presidents Day recess, and the full House would then ratify the decision. House leaders also have blessed Berman, according to Democratic aides.

Berman would keep his spot as chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, Smith said. Democratic rules allow him to keep both posts through the end of the 110th Congress.

Though he has kept a lower profile than the much-lionized Lantos, Berman also has been a strong defender of Israel and of human rights. “At least among the senior members of our committee, on a bipartisan basis there is a very deep and abiding commitment to Israel and to a strong U.S.-Israeli relationship, and a strong feeling that this Iranian regime with a nuclear weapon is an intolerable and unacceptable condition,” Berman told the Jewish Daily Forward in January.

He was an early advocate of sanctions against Saddam Hussein and led efforts to impose sanctions on Iran and Libya in 1996. Like Lantos, he voted to authorize the Iraq War, but he has since renounced that support and become a vocal critic of the war.

In 2007, he wrote a bill (HR 1263) to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq unless President Bush certified that the Iraqi government was making substantial progress toward 18 benchmarks the president identified as the goals of his “surge” strategy. A similar idea was incorporated into the 2007 war supplemental (HR 1591) that Bush vetoed last May.

Berman was an original cosponsor of Lantos’ legislation (HR 1400) to enhance sanctions against Iran, which the House passed in September. In December, Bush signed into law the Senate version of a Berman bill (PL 110-151) to allow U.S. prosecution of individuals who participated in acts deemed as genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia and Sudan and who have sought refuge in the United States.

Berman tried unsuccessfully to limit the reach of the Patriot Act (PL 107-56), the anti-terrorism law enacted in 2001 that permitted federal authorities to detain immigrants indefinitely. He has also expressed skepticism of a deal to give nuclear fuel to India because he said it could complicate nonproliferation efforts.

“Once you change the long-established nonproliferation rules for the benefit of one country — even a friendly democracy like India — then it becomes much easier for other countries to justify carve-outs for their special friends,” he said in a statement.

Like Lantos, Berman is a liberal trusted by Republicans. Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., turned to Berman in 2006 to take the top Democratic slot on the House ethics committee during a rancorous episode that forced Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia to step aside.

Berman helped clear a backlog of cases and preserve the panel’s integrity among members of both parties.

Molly Hooper and Kathryn A. Wolfe contributed to this story.