Top foreign policy aid to Mitt Romney Dan Senor today continued the Romney campaign’s increasingly difficult task of trying to differentiate its foreign policy from President Obama’s. When asked what Romney would do differently from Obama on Iran, Senor first mentioned a speech Romney gave on Iran five years ago and then boiled the difference down to more sanctions and some abstract notion of getting “serious about military action”:

SENOR: So to answer your question, one he’s for tougher sanctions, two, he is for projecting to the Iranians that the threat of military action is credible. It is not to say to we should use military force or that the Israelis should use military force but it is important that the Iranians believe that it is serious. No one in the world believes today that the U.S. is serious about military action and if no one else believes it it’s hard to believe that the Iranians believe it.

Watch the clip:

Of course, because Iran with a nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, the Obama administration has declared numerous times that the military option is on the table. And Senor must have missed reports this morning that the U.S. is building up its military presence in the Persian Gulf to check Iran. It appears that the problem for Senor is that the Obama administration has also been very open about the consequences of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities — which is something war supporters seem to want to ignore.

And on the sanctions front, “[f]ew countries have experienced such intense external pressure” as Iran is currently facing. And it’s unclear what “tougher sanctions” Romney would put in place because Senor never offered any specifics.

But this isn’t the first time one of Romney’s advisers has had trouble providing an alternative to Obama’s Iran policy. Last month Richard Williamson said a “President Romney will seek a negotiated settlement” to the Iranian nuclear stand-off, which incidentally the Obama administration also considers the “best and most permanent way” to end the crisis.

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The Los Angeles Times reports that Alexey Pushkov, chairman of the international affairs committee of Russia’s State Duma, said in a recent interview that Russian leaders are wondering whether Mitt Romney’s aggressive rhetoric toward Russia is previewing a “full-scale crisis” should he be elected president in November. Pushkov is referring to Romney’s comment during the campaign that Russia is America’s “number one geopolitical foe.”

“We don’t think that for us Romney will be an easy partner,” said Pushkov, an ally of President Vladimir Putin. “We think that Romney will be, on the rhetorical side, a replay of the Bush administration.” [...]

“If he is serious about this, I’m afraid he may choose the neocon-type people…In the first year of his presidency, we may have a full-scale crisis,” he said.

President George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Gen. Colin Powell, also recently criticized Romney’s comments on Russia. “When governor Romney not to long ago said ‘the Russian federation is our number one geo-strategic threat.’ Well, come on, Mitt, think. That isn’t the case,” he said.

Even one of Romney’s own foreign policy advisers thinks the former Massachusetts governor went a bit too far on Russia. “I think Romney is right to make Russia an issue,” the adviser told the Daily Beast. “But when he said that, the campaign should have walked it back and moved on.”

With a growing civil war in Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s notorious police state only increases repression and human rights violations against its own people.

A new report from New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) demonstrates just how prolific these violations of basic human rights have become in Syria. The group interviewed more than 200 Syrians and used the information to identify at least 27 detention centers where torture is used. The “archipelago of torture centers,” said HRW, “clearly point to a state policy of torture and ill-treatment and therefore constitute a crime against humanity.”

Syria’s four intelligence agencies, known together as the mukhabarat, employed a variety of torture methods against civilians and anti-government actors. One 31-year-old described the methods used against him:

They forced me to undress. Then they started squeezing my fingers with pliers. They put staples in my fingers, chest and ears. I was only allowed to take them out if I spoke. The staples in the ears were the most painful. They used two wires hooked up to a car battery to give me electric shocks. They used electric stun-guns on my genitals twice.

HRW detailed the methods and published sketches depicting their use. The group also published diagrams showing that, based on the interviews, Syrian authorities were putting up to 70 people in cells that European standards for detention would limit to five occupants.

When two or more interviewees identified a detention center, HRW added the location to an interactive map. Here’s a screen capture of the map showing the ten detention centers HRW identified in the capital Damascus (click here for the full interactive map):

HRW Emergencies researcher Ole Solvang said in a release: “By publishing their locations, describing the torture methods, and identifying those in charge we are putting those responsible on notice that they will have to answer for these horrific crimes.”

The group said that because Syria is not party to the Rome Statute, International Criminal Court proceedings against officials ordering and carrying out the torture would need to be mandated by the U.N. Security Council. Russia and China have so far blocked such measures. Clearly aiming to pressure Russia — Assad’s top international backer — HRW published its findings and recommendations (PDF) in Russian.