“They’ve got a president that is talking one day about having nuclear bombs and saying he’s not the next day, and taking hostages,” he said on Friday, referring to the Iranian capture of 15 British sailors and marines. “I’m not saying that we should take a foreign policy stance; I’m saying it’s not a good place to invest our money.”

Mr. Anderson’s language was notably more heated when he introduced the bill in January, raising the specter of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and calling money “the mother’s milk of terrorism.” Last week, Mr. Anderson said he had toned down the terrorism angle in part because of legal concerns regarding divestment bills, which came into vogue in the 1980s as part of a movement to force pensions and money out of South African interests in protest of apartheid. More recently, divestment has been used to voice displeasure with tobacco companies and the atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan.

States are not the only entities trying to put pressure on Iran. On March 24, the United Nations Security Council imposed new, more stringent sanctions in an effort to stop the country’s uranium enrichment program and to try to force it to rejoin negotiations. In Congress, Representative Tom Lantos, a Democrat from the San Francisco Bay Area, introduced legislation last month to impose additional economic sanctions on Iran. Mr. Lantos cited denials of the Holocaust by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and his comments that Israel should be “wiped off the map.”

Last year, California joined a roster of states that have opted out of investment in Sudan with a bill similar to the Iran bill, passed by a pension-related committee in the State Assembly on Wednesday.

Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, a Bay Area Democrat who cast the sole committee vote against the bill, said he thought it would find wide support in the Legislature despite his concerns about the plan’s feasibility and vagueness. “Our pension funds are invested in thousands of companies,” Mr. Torrico said. “I don’t know how you’re going to do it.”