WASHINGTON – When President Bush talks to the Congress this evening about the importance of Iran’s transition to democracy, he will face some skepticism – fueled by his own State Department which has irked both houses by blocking support to Iran’s pro-democracy movement for fear of disrupting now-failed nuclear talks, members and aides on Capitol Hill told The New York Sun.

Those nuclear negotiations have now been referred to the United Nations Security Council. Yesterday, that body’s five permanent members agreed that the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, should report Iran to the Security Council, according to the Associated Press. The Security Council, in the wake of failed attempts by Western powers to get Iran to adhere to U.N. nuclear regulations, could impose sanctions or other strict punishments in March, the AP reported. The referral move comes after Security Council permanent members Russia and China, both allies of Iran, agreed to the referral.

In America, the stalled pro-democracy legislation, the Iran Freedom Support Act, has been languishing for more than a year in the House and about a year in the Senate. It is described as a comprehensive bill designed to end the tyranny of the mullahs and the international security threat they pose by supporting the Iranian people in their quest for freedom. Among its many provisions, the bill would toughen sanctions against the Iranian regime, would provide “financial and political” assistance to civil society organizations, and would help fund the broadcast of free television and radio into Iran – reminiscent of the strategy employed by America in bringing down the Iron Curtain.

The legislation would also make it America’s official Iran policy “to support efforts by the people of Iran to exercise self-determination over the form of government in their country,” and “to actively support a national referendum in Iran with oversight by the international observers and monitors to certify the integrity and fairness of the referendum.”

News of the delay comes as Mr. Bush told reporters yesterday in advance of his State of the Union address: “We want the people of Iran to be able to live in a free society. And so tomorrow night, I am going to talk about this issue and make clear the policy of the United States.”

The House version of the Iran Freedom Support Act, introduced January 6, 2005, by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican of Florida, now has 333 cosponsors – almost 77% of the House. The Senate companion bill, introduced February 9, 2005, by Senator Santorum, a Republican of Pennsylvania, has 42 bipartisan co-sponsors, or almost half the Senate. Neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Schumer, both Democrats of New York, has signed on to the bill.

Despite the overwhelming bicameral support, however, neither bill has progressed further in the legislative process. In the House, the legislation has been stalled under the International Relations Committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Hyde, a Republican of Illinois. The Senate bill has not been taken up by the Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator Lugar, a Republican of Indiana. The delay is prompting outrage in a restive House, where Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat of Nevada and a member of the International Relations Committee, has circulated a letter among the committee pressing Mr. Hyde to move on the bill.

In the meantime, despite negotiations with the United Nations, the Europeans, and America, Iran has broken the U.N. seals on its nuclear reactors and grown increasingly threatening toward the West, with President Ahmadinejad threatening that Israel must be “wiped off the map.”

According to House staffers familiar with the discussions, the Freedom Act has been held up by the State Department, which asked Mr. Hyde not to move the House bill forward because of concerns that the legislation’s tough language and measures against Iran would provoke the regime as America and the Europeans tried to negotiate the mullahs out of their nuclear ambitions. A senior Republican staffer confirmed that Mr. Hyde had been asked by the State Department not to move the Freedom Act forward so as not to upset the nuclear talks.

“I think that hiatus is nearing an end,” the senior staffer added. “We are reaching a real point of frustration with the absence of real progress, prompting some now to suggest that the timing is right to move the legislation.”

A spokesman for Mr. Hyde suggested yesterday that the legislation was now “under review.”

According to one congressional staffer, the State Department also tried to get the House bill reduced to a “sense of the Congress” resolution. Iran has been identified by the State Department as the most active member on its list of official state sponsors of terrorism.

A State Department official said yesterday: “We definitely support democracy efforts in Iran, but we have not been talking to the Senate on specifically that legislation you’re referring to,” declining to comment on the House bill. Calls placed to State Department legislative officials seeking further comment yesterday were not returned.

On the Senate side, Mr. Santorum likened the situation with the Iran Freedom Support Act to the Syria Accountability Act of 2003, which he said was “for years held up because of the State Department and the Foreign Relations Committee.”

“We’re working through those same traps” on Iran, Mr. Santorum said yesterday in a phone interview with the Sun. “It’s not surprising that the State Department is completely wrong on these issues. In my opinion, the bureaucracy at the State Department gets it wrong more often than they get it right.”

Mr. Santorum added that it was now urgent “to more aggressively support the activities of both exile groups as well as groups within the country to spread a different point of view in Iran. And prodemocracy groups are the best way.”

In addition to providing “financial and political assistance” to pro-democracy groups, the Freedom Act also officially recognizes that Iran is a “repressive” terrorist state, and stipulates: “Representatives of the Government of Iran should be denied access to all United States Government buildings.” The Freedom Act would create a new position, to be filled by presidential appointment, responsible for assisting the president by coordinating among federal agencies with oversight of Iran policy. The bill also calls for increased American scrutiny of interactions between Iran, Russia, China, Malaysia, Pakistan, and the nuclear-arms network of a Pakistani physicist, A.Q. Khan.

“Even though the Bush administration is doing everything possible through diplomacy and pressure by our allies to stop Iran’s nuclear buildup,” Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said yesterday, “the time for passing my bill has come. To continue waiting only digs us into a deeper hole.”

Some Iranian pro-democracy activists agreed yesterday, saying that the State Department’s attempts to block aid to the Iranian people in order to protect the now-failed nuclear negotiations demonstrated the futility of dealing with the mullahs – and demonstrated that the best hope for reforming Iran is to trust the Iranian people, not their tormentors.

“Talk is cheap,” a Washington-based Iranian exile leader and a former Iranian minister of education, Manoucher Ganji, said yesterday about negotiations with the regime. The State Department, Mr. Ganji said, had wasted a year’s worth of potential reform by blocking the bill, because they were holding back aid to the only forces capable of getting Iran to discard its nuclear ambitions.

If the State Department genuinely wanted Iran to reverse its trajectory, Mr. Ganji said, it should support free TV and radio into the regime to inform the Iranian people about the dangers posed to them by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s program. “Tell them about Chernobyl. Tell them about Three Mile Island,” he said. “That’s how you get rid of the plants.”

A fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a longtime advocate of American support for Iranian prodemocracy organizations, Michael Ledeen, said the State Department’s approach was “short-sighted” and “intellectually confused,” because it set up a false dichotomy between helping the Iranian people pursue freedom and ending the regime’s nuclear program. “Anyone who’s serious about national security,” Mr. Ledeen said, “should be supporting this bill.”

House staff last week suggested that some candidates for House leadership posts to be decided this week, including the front-runner for the Majority Leader spot, Rep. Roy Blunt, of Missouri, had indicated their willingness to move the Freedom Act sometime in March.