War chatter is on the rise in Israel, where the prime minister and his defense chief seem to be preparing their public for an attack on Iran this fall. The increasingly dire warnings from Israel that pressure and diplomacy have failed and a unilateral strike might be in the offing, however, have been met by American pronouncements that war is not the answer, not yet at least.

Enter Israeli president Shimon Peres, who said yesterday on Israeli television what many analysts and others have long-since realized: That Israel does not have the military capabilities to go-it-alone and inflict a significant delay on Iran’s nuclear program. Peres said:

Now, it is clear to us that we cannot do it alone. We can delay. It is clear to us that we have to proceed together with America. There are questions about coordination and timing, but as serious as the danger is, this time at least we are not alone.

A poll of Israelis released yesterday found that 61 percent of them “believe Iran should not be attacked without U.S. consent.”

Peres’s sentiment echoed one by Israeli opposition Shaul Mofaz, who, amid a curse-filled tirade against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threat’s of a unilateral attack, singled out his selection of a confidant, Avi Dichter, as home front defense minister:

A home front defense minister should not be a rubber stamp in the hands of those planning a hasty attack [on Iran’s nuclear facilities] that has not been coordinated with the United States.

President Obama considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. And he’s vowed again and again to keep all options on the table to deal wtih it. Peres said yesterday, contra attacks by Republicans, he had confidence in Obama’s resolve:

I am convinced this is an American interest. I am convinced he recognizes the American interest and he isn’t saying this just to keep us happy. I have no doubt about it, after having had talks with him.

U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of building international pressure and using diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

When he was with Mitt Romney in Jerusalem last month, top campaign foreign policy adviser Dan Senor made a splash by saying that a Romney administration would greenlight an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Senor quickly clarified in a statement that it was Romney’s “fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures” will curb Iran’s program. Today, Senor implied those measures weren’t having the right effects on Iran.

Speaking on right-wing radio host’s Bill Bennet’s show, Senor falsely claimed that the international sanctions regime against Iran wasn’t slowing its nuclear progress. He said:

The question is: Are [sanctions] having enough effect to actually slow down the path towards a nuclear weapons capability? And there’s no evidence that it is actually slowing them down.

Listen to a clip:

Senor claim echoes one made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he appeared with Romney last month in Jerusalem. Netanyahu said, “[A]ll the sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota.” Those statements are directly contradicted by the United Nations. A U.N. panel last year reported that the U.N. Security Council sanctions spearheaded by the Obama administration were “constraining Iran’s procurement of items related to prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile activity and thus slowing development of these programs.” A recent Pentagon report seemed to bolster this conclusion with regard to Iran’s missile capabilities. While it’s true that the pressure has not yet caused Iran to buckle, it’s simply not accurate to say the sanctions have not slowed Iran’s program.

As neoconservative analyst Patrick Clawson noted today, “[F]or the most part, Democrats and Republicans no longer show much difference when it comes to Iran policy.” That’s true — to an extent. The main difference is that the Romney camp uses a more belligerent tone, attempts to suppress public discourse about the possible consequences of a strike, and has a lower threshold for war. Senor expanded on the latter point on Bennet’s show, saying that a nuclear “capability” is “just as big a threat” as Iran developing a weapon. But that’s absurd: no one would fear a dismantled gun as much as an assembled one. What’s more, it’s not exactly clear what “capability” means. Robert Wright noted that one could “define the term so broadly that Iran already has a ‘capability’,” leaving Americans guessing as to exactly when a Romney administration would opt to start a war with Iran.

President Obama considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. And he’s vowed again and again to keep all options on the table to deal wtih it. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of building international pressure and using diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, a top foreign policy advier to Mitt Romney said the GOP presidential nominee would support an Israeli decision to attack Iran’s nuclear program. The right-wing adviser Dan Senor said Iran should not be able to attain a nuclear “capability” — a significant break in language from state U.S. policy.

Senor told reporters:

If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing the capability, the governor would respect that decision.

In a follow-up statement, Senor said, “We should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course, and it is his fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures will do so,” but that an American attack should remain an option.

While Obama has said an Iranian nuclear weapon is “unacceptable,” declaring a nuclear “capability” an American “red line” that would trigger war sets a lower threshold for U.S. military involvement. The CIA has laid out a specific definition, but the “nuclear capability” language is a complex issue. The word “capability” has a special meaning in the non-proliferation context, but it’s not always clear exactly what. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), one of the Senate’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.” Hawks in Congress pushed a bill this year to shift the official U.S. “red line” to a nuclear “capability.”

During an appearance with Romney in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayahu said he agreed with Romney’s approach, falsely claiming that “all the sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota.” U.N. sanctions have delayed Iran’s nuclear progress. A U.N. ban on selling Iran weapons technologies appears to have set back their ballistic missile programs as well.

President Obama considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. And he’s vowed again and again to keep all options on the table to deal wtih it. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of building international pressure and using diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis. Obama has also reaffirmed Israel’s “sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.”

Romney has long supported military involvement in the Middle East and still defends President Bush’s preventative invasion in Iraq. In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Romney said, “President Bush took action which he believed, based upon the information that was available to him, both from British intelligence and intelligence in our country and around the world, that Saddam Hussein presented a very serious threat to the world, including the potential of weapons of mass destruction.”

In the late 1940s, Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg famously said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” In recent years, adherence to the axiom has fallen by the wayside. In 2005, President Clinton criticized the sitting Bush administration in a Dubai speech. And President Obama delivered a 2008 speech to cheering throngs in Berlin during a presidential race. But Obama’s Berlin speech focused on policy issues and avoided criticizing his Republican opponent Sen. John McCain (AZ) or the waning Bush administration.

This weekend, however, the Romney campaign took politics overseas in a much more explicit fashion: dispatching two advisers to foreign publications amid an established one-on-one presidential race to heavily criticize President Obama by name and build their case that Mitt Romney should be president.

In one of the salvos against President Obama, Romney economic adviser Glenn Hubbard took to the pages of the German business magazine Handelsblatt to sharply criticize the administration’s stance on the European fiscal crisis. According to a translated portions of the article in the New York Times, Hubbard lambasted Obama’s “ignorance of the causes of the crisis and of a growth trend in the future,” calling the president “unwise.” After taking the president to task by name, Hubbard contrasted him with Romney:

Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican opponent, understands this very well and advises a gradual fiscal consolidation for the U.S.: structural reform to stimulate growth.

According to the Times, the Obama campaign already took a shot at Hubbard’s op-ed:

In a foreign news outlet, Governor Romney’s top economic adviser both discouraged essential steps that need to be taken to promote economic recovery and attempted to undermine America’s foreign policy abroad.

The second overseas assault on President Obama came from Romney foreign policy adviser Amb. Richard Williamson. Speaking to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Williamson zeroed in on Obama’s Iran and Israel policies. “Under Barack Obama, our national security capabilities have decreased,” he said, blasting “President Obama’s feckless and ineffective leadership.” He went on:

What the Governor has tried to make clear is that one of the unfortunate results of the Obama foreign policy is our friends and allies, including Great Britain, Israel and others, have not had their interests taken into account, have not been consulted closely, and there isn’t a constructive working relationship.

The claims are baseless. Indeed, Romney and his advisers are the ones who last month publicly trashed Great Britain, its leaders, and other European allies. And Williamson’s claim that “there isn’t a constructive working relationship” with Israel belie a reality where Israeli leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu note that Obama “rightly said that our security cooperation is unprecedented,” and Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Obama is an “extremely strong supporter of Israel in regard to its security” and that no one should “raise any question mark about the devotion of this president to the security of Israel.”

With direct political attacks being waged overseas, the 1940s and Vandenberg are clearly in the rearview. But perhaps at least the Romney campaign could do America — and the world — a favor by maintaining a modicum of honesty in their attacks on Obama launched from overseas.

Among Israel’s former top security officials, a growing consensus has emerged over the past several months that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be counterproductive to Israeli interests. Yesterday, former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan emphasized that point, telling an audience that “a strike could accelerate the procurement of the bomb” and “provide them with the legitimacy to achieve nuclear capabilities.” But a new report by Ynet, suggests that the consensus opposing an Israeli attack on Iran extends all the way to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense chiefs.

“[P]olitical sources told Ynet on Wednesday that IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo and several top section chiefs in the Mossad are against a strike at this time,” reads a report by Ynet. “Without Gantz’ support the chances of mounting a strike are slim,” an anonymous “political source” said.

Indeed, Gantz and Pardo have expressed reservations in the past about the effectiveness of an Israeli strike.

In December, Pardo warned that while Iran poses a threat to Israel, “The term existential threat is used too freely,” a view closely mirrored by former Mossad Chief Ephraim Halevy, Meir Dagan and a number of former high-ranking Israeli security officials.

And while hawks in the U.S. and Israel frequently misrepresent the intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program to portray an Iranian nuclear weapons as imminent, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz pushed back last month, telling Haaretz, “[Iran] hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile.” That assessment is shared by U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Gantz also told Haaretz, “I don’t think [Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei] will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people.”

Ynet looked at Netanyahu’s nine-minister security forum and concluded that Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman support an attack. But Vice Premier Moshe Yaalon, Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz and ministers Dan Meridor, Benny Begin, Eli Yishai and Yuval Steinitz oppose a strike.

A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. However, intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor has emerged as a moderate voice in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. Last month, he split with many of his Likud party colleagues, in arguing that “An attack on Iran wouldn’t add anything to [Israel's] security.” Today, in an interview published in the Times Of Israel, Meridor delivered harsh words to his colleagues who have overseen the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Meridor warned that the current calm in relations with the Palestinians might be producing “an illusion” among Israelis “that this is sustainable in the long term. It is not. It is an anomaly. We need to change it.”

The deputy prime minister urged the government to freeze further settlements “across the line of the [settlement] blocs or the fence or whatever you call it,” a reference to the Israeli West Bank barrier which is partially built along the 1949 armistice line, or “Green Line.”

Meridor emphasized that he was not advocating for a freeze in construction in East Jerusalem, but urged the Prime Minister’s office:

[D]on’t build all over the place, because this is the most damaging of all the things that we are doing to ourselves in the world. Because people say: ‘You offer the Palestinians a state. But if you build there in every place, you don’t really mean it.’

The views expressed in the interview are closer to the Obama administration’s policy of opposing all settlement construction and endorsing a negotiated border between Israel and a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders but with mutually agreed upon land swaps. Meridor said:

I think we are at the beginning of being able to do it. Because President Obama spoke of swaps, not of [an Israel withdrawn to the lines of] ’67… And Bush spoke of it… So we already see a basic understanding of the paradigm. The state won’t be along the ’67 lines. No way. It will be different, with some compensation. But if we build all over the place, we lose. Even if we don’t have an agreement [with the Palestinians], we need to have a rational policy.

Meridor criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for not accepting the proposal offered by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert four years ago but acknowledged that global public opinion had turned against the Israeli government because of its continued approval of settlement constructions.

While some members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, such as Deputy PM Moshe Ya’alon, and right-wing pro-Israel advocates in Washington have suggested that Israel should not allow a Palestinian state, Meridor countered that such a policy could spell the end of Israeli democracy:

The whole land is Jewish historically… I am fully attached to this. There’s no rhetoric. It’s really what I think. But the reality now is that we can’t get all of it and stay a democratic state or a Jewish state, in terms of numbers and in terms of regime. And this is why we need to cut, and I’m ready to cut…

Despite admonitions from the State Department, Netanyahu’s government has continued to approve and/or legalize settlement constructions in Jerusalem and the West Bank following the expiration of a freeze on settlement construction in September, 2010.