Mitt Romney and his campaign foreign policy advisers have had a hard time trying to differentiate the presumptive GOP nominee’s Iran policy from President Obama’s. But at the same time, they’ve been offering clues that a President Romney would lean more toward the military option in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program.

An anonymous Romney foreign policy adviser recently reinforced that view, telling the National Journal in an article published today that there isn’t much discussion among Romney’s team about diplomacy with Iran:

Meanwhile, however, the Israelis—who are engaged in their own intense debate about whether to strike—hear a cacophony of voices in the Romney camp. “We’ve got a very big tent. You’ve got a lot of different voices,” concedes another Romney adviser. “The debate isn’t ‘Gee, can we live with an Iranian nuclear weapon,’ it’s how you structure a response.” Even so, with Romney playing to his conservative base, “there hasn’t been a big conversation of how much would he put back into a diplomatic effort” with Iran, the first adviser says.

And if there hasn’t been much talk about diplomacy with Iran inside the campaign, there certainly hasn’t been any discussion outside of it either. Instead, the Romney campaign regularly accuses Obama of not sufficiently threatening military action against Iran (despite the fact that the president ordered a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf and often says no option is off the table).

Romney’s advisers are also ratcheting up the war rhetoric — whether it’s lowering the threshold for war, downplaying the effects of sanctions or criticizing discussion of the consequences of an attack. Indeed, one top Romney adviser even cheered for diplomacy to fail.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is aware, not only of the threat an Iranian nuclear weapon poses, but also the potential negative consequences of a military attack on Iran. And that, coupled with U.N., U.S. and Israeli assessments that Iran has not yet decided on whether to build a nuclear weapon, leads the administration to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran, a track the it deems the “best and most permanent way” to solve the nuclear crisis.

With the start of the Republican National Convention this week in Tampa, FL, the GOP draft platform has been getting a lot of attention, particularly for its extreme anti-abortion language and opposition to gay rights. But the Republican platform also attacks President Obama’s National Security Strategy for including “climate change” as a “severe” national security threat:

“The strategy subordinates our national security interests to environmental, energy and international health issues, and elevates ‘climate change’ to the level of a ‘severe threat’ equivalent to foreign aggression. The word ‘climate,’ in fact, appears in the current President’s strategy more often than Al Qaeda, nuclear proliferation, radial Islam, or weapons of mass destruction. The phrase ‘global war on terror’ does not appear at all and has been purposely avoided and changed by his Administration to “overseas contingency operations.’”

There’s a reason Obama’s strategy elevates climate change to a “severe” threat: it’s because that assessment reflects the reality. Indeed, as CAP’s Michael Werz notes in a April report, “The potential for the changing climate and associated migration to induce conflict or exacerbate existing instability is now recognized in national security circles.”

But recognizing a changing climate as a key national security threat is nothing new. Back in 2007, a military advisory board convened by CNA found that climate change “poses a serious threat to America’s national security,” “acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world” and “will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world.”

“The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say,” the New York Times reported in 2009.

The Defense Department agrees. In its latest defense review, the Pentagon says that “climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment” and that climate change “may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.”

And Media Matters recently provided a list of 15 current and former national security officials who have said climate change poses a serious security threat, noting that “experts across the political spectrum agree that climate change poses a serious threat to our national security, and that transitioning to alternative energy will enhance military effectiveness.”

Indeed, as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in May, “The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security. Rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.”