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Obama, Romney scuffle over Iran

As on other foreign policy topics addressed in that debate, Romney generally avoided attacking the actual Obama policies, while asserting that he would carry them out better.

Or, as Arshad Mohammed of Reuters summed it up: “At times, it was as if Mitt Romney had come to praise Barack Obama’s foreign policy rather than to bury it.”

On Iran, that tactic meant his chief policy pledge was to impose more and tougher sanctions and to do so more quickly than Obama.

Romney was also very careful not to appear a warmonger.  He emphasized that he would only use military action against Iran as a last resort after all other efforts had failed. That has been the Obama philosophy throughout his term.

Romney clearly wanted to put some distance between himself and what many Americans see as the over-emphasis on militray action of the last Republican Administration when it invaded Iraq.

On sanctions, the United States had near total sanctions imposed long before Obama took office.  President Bill Clinton in 1995 banned almost all US exports to, imports from and investment in Iran.  The big change of recent years has been the shift in Europe from opposition to sanctions to the embrace of extremely tough sanctions just this year.

But Romney only spoke about US sanctions.  Obama made a reference to the US concentration on trying to get other countries to sanction Iran.  But his was description was too vague for most viewers to understand that he was saying that Romney was missing the point in his focus on unilateral US sanctions.

Neither candidate addressed the issue of the impact of sanctions on the Iranian public.

Throughout the debate, Obama also inserted frequent references to Israel, apparently trying to counter Romney’s charges during the campaign that Obama has allowed relations with Israel to suffer.

While both candidates spoke repeatedly of Iranian threats to Israel, neither mentioned the Arab states and concerns around the Persian Gulf that Iran’s main ambitions lie there.

Here are the major comments by the two candidates Monday when moderator Bob Schieffer introduced the topic of Iran:

OBAMA:  As long as I’m president of the United States Iran will not get a nuclear weapon. I made that clear when I came into office.

We then organized the strongest coalition and the strongest sanctions against Iran in history, and it is crippling their economy. Their currency has dropped 80 percent. Their oil production has plunged to the lowest level since they were fighting a war with Iraq 20 years ago. So their economy is in a shambles.

And the reason we did this is because a nuclear Iran is a threat to our national security, and it is a threat to Israel’s national security. We cannot afford to have a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world.

Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. And for them to be able to provide nuclear technology to non-state actors, that’s unacceptable. And they have said that they want to see Israel wiped off the map.

So the work that we’ve done with respect to sanctions now offers Iran a choice. They can take the diplomatic route and end their nuclear program or they will have to face a united world and a United States president, me, who said we’re not going to take any options off the table.

The disagreement I have with Governor Romney is that, during the course of this campaign, he’s often talked as if we should take premature military action. I think that would be a mistake, because when I’ve sent young men and women into harm’s way, I always understand that that is the last resort, not the first resort.

ROMNEY: Well, first of all, I want to underscore the same point the president made which is that, if I’m President of the United States—when I’m president of the United States—we will stand with Israel….

It is also essential for us to understand what our mission is in Iran, and that is to dissuade Iran from having a nuclear weapon through peaceful and diplomatic means. And crippling sanctions are something I called for five years ago, when I was in Israel, speaking at the Herzliya Conference. I laid out seven steps, crippling sanctions were number one. And they do work. You’re seeing it right now in the economy. It’s absolutely the right thing to do, to have crippling sanctions. I would have put them in place earlier. But it’s good that we have them.

Number two, something I would add today is, I would tighten those sanctions. I would say that ships that carry Iranian oil can’t come into our ports. I imagine the EU would agree with us as well. Not only ships couldn’t, but I’d say companies that are moving their oil can’t, people who are trading in their oil can’t. I would tighten those sanctions further. Secondly, I’d take on diplomatic isolation efforts. I’d make sure that Ahmadi-nejad is indicted under the Genocide Convention. His words amount to genocide incitation. I would indict him for it. I would also make sure that their diplomats are treated like the pariahs they are around the world—the same way we treated the apartheid diplomats of South Africa….

Of course, a military action is the last resort. It is something one would only—only—consider if all of the other avenues had been tried to their full extent.

OBAMA:   You know, there have been times, governor, frankly, during the course of this campaign, where it sounded like you thought that you’d do the same things we did, but you’d say them louder and somehow that would make a difference.

And it turns out that the work involved in setting up these crippling sanctions is painstaking. It’s meticulous. We started from the day we got into office. And the reason it was so important—and this is a testament to how we’ve restored American credibility and strength around the world—is we had to make sure that all the countries participated, even countries like Russia and China. Because if it’s just us that are imposing sanctions—we’ve had sanctions in place a long time. It’s because we got everybody to agree that Iran is seeing so much pressure. And we’ve got to maintain that pressure.

ROMNEY:  I think from the very beginning, one of the challenges we’ve had with Iran is that they have looked at this Administration, and felt that the Administration was not as strong as it needed to be.

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