On a campaign call just ahead of Vice President Joe Biden’s foreign policy speech today, top foreign policy advisers to presumtive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney attacked the Obama administration’s Iran policy. While emphatically denying that the Romney campaign was threatening Iran with an attack, his advisers Dan Senor and Alex Wong admonished the administration for an honest discourse about what the potential consequences of an attack would be.

Asked by a reporter about Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s comments last week that the Obama administration-led U.N. sanctions program on Iran have been “effective,” the Romney advisers said:

DAN SENOR: (T)he administration has gone out of its way to convey that the military option is not serious. I mean, just look at the things Secretary [of Defense Leon] Panetta has said over the last year, whether it was at the Halifax conference, whether it was the Saban conference at Brookings… He went out of his way to talk about how disastrous military action against Iran would be for the United States, for the global economy, for the region. …

ALEX WONG: The administration has repeatedly talked down the military option and the effectiveness and the (inaudible) of the military option by the united states and Israel.

Listen to a clip of the call here:

Romney’s advisers offer, at best, misleading interpretations of Obama administration policies and statements; at worst, they make claims unsupported by the facts. For example, far from “project[ing] to the world that the military option against Iran is off the table,” Obama has said again and again that all options remain “on the table” to deal with a potential Iranian nuclear weapons program. A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, and the nuclear non-proliferation regime, though U.S. and Israeli intelligence have not concluded that Iran has made a decision to pursue a weapon.

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Today on a press call with Mitt Romney’s campaign foreign policy advisers, former Navy Secretary during the Reagan administration and now Romney adviser John Lehman claimed that American allied military leaders around the world are telling him that under President Obama, the United States is no longer leading in world affairs. As one piece of evidence, Lehman cited the Obama administration’s policies in combating piracy:

LEHMAN: I think the biggest concern when I talk to my former counterparts and current military leaders in — among our allies in Europe and the Pacific is, the theme that they — I keep hearing from them is, Why is the United States under Obama abdicating leadership or keeping stability in the world? … And they see our abdication of leadership in for instance dealing with the pirates. We were not in a leadership position and that’s opened up a very attractive opportunity for the Russians and even the Chinese have two ships out there.

Listen to the clip:

Absent in Lehman’s argument of course is the fact that, according to data released just this week, sea piracy worldwide has declined 28 percent in the first quarter of the year and, as the AP reported, “attacks fell sharply in Somalia’s waters thanks to international naval patrols.” And which country has a “large” naval presence there? The United States.

“When the Obama administration came to office the problem of piracy off the coast of Somalia was snowballing out of control,” Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro said recently at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress, “through the collective effort of the United States, the international community, and the private sector, we are now seeing signs of clear progress.” Shapiro continued:

The numbers clearly demonstrate this. In 2011, the number of successful pirate attacks fell by nearly half. As a result, there has been a significant drop in the numbers of ships and crew held hostage. In January 2011, pirates held 31 ships and 710 hostages. In early March of 2012 pirates held eight ships and 213 hostages – a roughly 70 percent decline. This is still way too many, but it is clear advances are being made.

“The Obama administration has pursued a strategy that seeks to leverage all elements of U.S. power” to combat piracy, Shapiro added, which comprises an integrated multi-dimensional approach that includes diplomatic engagement, expanding security at sea, preventing attacks and debilitating piracy networks.

Also absent from Lehman’s argument? Obama’s order in 2009 for a successful Navy SEALS operation to take out pirates holding an American ship captain hostage, nor his most recent order for U.S. special ops forces to rescue an American and a Danish hostages from pirate-affiliate kidnappers.

Vice President Joe Biden hit back at the Romney campaign’s foreign policy positions today in remarks delivered at New York University. In a wide ranging speech reviewing the Obama administration’s foreign policy, Biden criticized Romney’s “Cold War mindset” on national defense and slammed the presumptive Republican nominee for his “go it alone” foreign policy positions.

But Biden’s harshest reprimand of Romney was saved for the former Massachusetts governor’s critique of President Obama’s Iran policy. Romney has swung between essentially endorsing the Obama administration’s policy of diplomacy plus pressure — via sanctions — to calling for outright military action against Iran. Biden said:

Here’s what he says. He says we need “crippling sanctions,” apparently unaware that through President Obama’s leadership we produced just that, crippling sanctions. He emphasizes the need for “a credible military option” and “a regular presence of aircraft carrier groups” in the region, apparently ignorant of the fact that’s exactly what our policy is and what we’re doing.

Biden singled out Romney’s criticisms of the White House’s Iran-policy as “counterproductive” and promoting “loose talk of war” that could ultimately hurt the international sanctions regime engineered by the administration:

I think it’s fair to say the only step we could take that we aren’t already taking is to launch a war against Iran. If that’s what governor Romney means by a “very different policy” then he should tell the American people. He should say so. Otherwise the governor’s tough talk about military action is just that, talk. And I would add, counterproductive talk. Folks, loose talk about a war has incredibly negative consequences in our efforts to end Iran’s nuclear quest. And let me tell you why, because it unsettles world oil markets. It drives up oil prices. When oil prices go up, Iran’s coffers fill up, undermining the effect of the sanctions that are already in place. This type of Romney Talk is just not smart.

Watch it:

Romney’s foreign policy advisers — in a press call before Biden’s speech — seemed to inadvertently validate Biden’s charge of the Romney campaign’s “Cold War mindset.” Romney foreign policy adviser Pierre Prosper claimed that, under the Obama administration, “The United States abandoned its missile defense sites in Poland and Czechoslovakia” — of which the latter dissolved nearly 20 years ago after the fall of the U.S.S.R. And on the same call, another adviser, former Reagan Navy Secretary John Lehman, warned of a the threat from “the Soviets” in the Arctic region.

Later today, Vice President Biden is expected in a speech to open up an attack on Mitt Romney’s foreign policy saying that a President Romney will take America back to the George W. Bush era. “Gov. Romney is counting on our collective amnesia,” Biden said according to excerpts already released.

The Romney campaign organized a conference call today with three of Romney’s foreign policy advisers to push back. During the call, Romney adviser Ambassador Pierre Prosper attacked President Obama for dealing with Russia, albeit using geographical terms from the Cold War era:

PROSPER: The United States has become a spectator on issues of national security. We’ve also been embarrassed by North Korea where again it continues to be a conciliatory leaning forward approach and yet the North Koreans will launch a missile surprising the United States by violating their agreement.

You know Russia is another example where we give and Russia gets and we get nothing in return. The United States abandoned its missile defense sites in Poland and Czechoslovakia, yet Russia does nothing but obstruct us, or efforts in Iran and Syria.

Listen to the clip from the conference call:

Aside from the fact that “Czechoslovakia” broke up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia nearly 20 years ago, the Obama administration never “abandoned” missile defense sites because they were never there to begin with. Back in 2009, Obama decided to replace plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe and, as one expert noted at the time, “replac[e] it with a more technologically-promising” one.

And as for getting nothing from Russia, the Obama administration spearheaded an effort to apply tougher sanctions on Iran in 2010 and in June of that year, Russia voted for U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, which imposed a fourth round of tough sanctions on Iran. Last year, a U.N. panel said those sanctions “are constraining Iran’s procurement of items related to prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile activity and thus slowing development of these programs.”