Mitt Romney continued his attack on the Obama administration’s Iran policy yesterday evening in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Romney, once again, falsely claimed the Obama administration has taken the “military option” off the table and claimed he would impose “crippling sanctions” on Iran’s nuclear program. Blitzer asked Romney about his Iran policy:

BLITZER: How far would go to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb?

ROMNEY: Well Iran has to be convinced that we would go all the way, we would take military action, and that military action is on the table. I think our president has communicated in various subtle ways that there is not a military option that we would consider. I think that’s a mistake. I think you have to have crippling sanctions against Iran. I think you have to have covert action in Iran to convince the people there of the folly of becoming a nuclear nation. But I think the Iranians have to believe as well, and particularly their leadership believe, that America is would considering taking military option [sic]. That has to be on the table and plans have to be in place and that’s clearly something that you have to consider.

Watch it:

It’s unclear what “subtle ways” the White House indicated that the “military option” was off the table but Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, when asked about military contingencies for attacking Iran during his Senate confirmation hearing, said that such planning was occurring.

Romney’s claims that the administration failed to successfully use covert action or sanctions to slow Iran’s nuclear program would also appear to be politically motivated, yet factually baseless, charges. Covert action, such as the Stuxnet computer virus, and sanctions appear to have had the intended effect of slowing the Iranian nuclear program. Indeed, IAEA reports would indicate that the nuclear program is moving much more slowly than either Tehran or Washington’s Iran hawks would care to mention.

But Romney’s baseless attacks on Obama’s Iran policy appear to have become a go-to talking point in the GOP presidential hopeful’s interviews. What’s even more interesting is that, so far, no interviewer has called him out on the blatantly false statements he is making about the U.S.’s efforts to slow Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

The announcement that 90 U.S. senators signed a letter to President Obama urging him to sanction Iran’s central bank has been described by some American officials, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon, as the “nuclear option” or, in the eyes of some Iranian officials, an act of war. But that hasn’t stopped some of Washington’s most outspoken Iran hawks from applauding potential legislation aimed at freezing Iran out of the global financial system.

The letter, cosponsored by Sens. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), calls for blacklisting Bank Markazi, Iran’s central bank, and observes that, “If our allies are willing to join, we believe this step can be even more effective.”

But even advocates of ever tighter sanctions, like the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘ Mark Dubowitz, admit that getting U.S. allies to join in this extreme move will be difficult. Rubin quips: “The hang-up — no surprise — is that there is no — you got it! — international consensus.”

Rubin goes on to consult with Dubowitz who tells her:

When it comes to implementing tough measures to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, there is no longer a “third rail” that should prevent us from trying any measure to squeeze the regime. The Obama administration must target Iran’s crude oil sales, designate the Central Bank of Iran, and sanction the Chinese, Indian and other companies that continue to do business in Iran’s energy sector. We don’t have time for half measures and slow, incremental changes.

Rubin and Dubowitz now warn that Iraq-like sanctions — those that caused infant mortality to increase more than three-fold in seven years — are the only way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and avoiding a military confrontation, but just last week they were declaring the sanctions strategy dead. Dubowitz, quoted by Rubin, said on Thursday:

[The Iranians] are driving ruthlessly forward on their nuclear weapon program while we delude ourselves into thinking that sanctions are a silver bullet that will stop them. Sanctions are an important part of a comprehensive Iran policy that needs to include the real threat of force. Sanctions are an important part of a comprehensive Iran policy that needs to include the real threat of force.

The push for a risky, de facto oil embargo has been floated for the past few months but back in April, Dubowitz admitted that such extreme sanctions could have disastrous effects. Speaking on a Heritage Foundation panel, he said:

We’re playing very delicately with a very sensitive oil market and we have to be very careful not to shoot ourselves in the face by going after Iranian crude through an embargo or through the Iran crude oil sanctions act which sends a message to the markets that we’re going to take a million barrels of crude off line next week.

In June, the Atlantic Council’s Barbara Slavin told Think Progress that legislators pushing for ever tighter sanctions should be careful not to make the same mistakes the U.S. made with Iraq, an ineffective sanctions scheme which exacted a massive humanitarian toll. She said:

What they want is a stealth embargo. And they want it to be slow and quiet so it doesn’t cause shocks to the market, but that’s what they want.

If it starts to look like a total embargo, they will lose support. It starts to look like Iraq.

It’s worth remembering that while these calls for extreme sanctions against Iran are posited as a way to avoid military confrontation, the same coterie of neoconservative hawks never let up calling for military action against Iraq despite the draconian sanctions put in place.

Congress, led by über-hawks in each chamber, appears to be pushing aggressive measures against Iran that could have unintended consequences ranging from weakening Iran’s embattled opposition to creating a spike in oil prices that would harm global economic recovery and at the same time enriching the Iranian regime.

A new brief from Washington’s Atlantic Council suggests the U.S. should focus its Iran efforts on human rights sanctions and being “creative and flexible” with offers to the Islamic Republic in order to produce a deal that curbs its alleged drive toward nuclear weapons. Pushing further unilateral and extraterritorial sanctions risks alienating allies that have formed the core of international support, said the brief, authored by Council fellow and journalist Barbara Slavin. That international support, meticulously culled by the Obama administration, led to a U.N. Security Council resolution that — unlike many of the U.S. and Europe’s so-called “secondary” unilateral measures — have shown results.

In her brief, Slavin writes:

Piling on yet more stringent and comprehensive penalties — seeking to embargo Iranian oil exports, for example — risks undermining the significant international cooperation the Obama administration have achieved without giving adequate time for the sanctions already imposed to work. “If you push too far, you risk undoing a lot of what they have been able to accomplish,” [Center for Global Development sanctions specialist Kimberly] Elliott said. “If we go for a complete embargo, you’re going to lose everything.”

Congress, though, has spent the past few weeks — coinciding with the big AIPAC conference in Washington — introducing legislation that, according to advocacy groups, comes dangerously close to imposing a de facto oil embargo. In a letter to Capitol Hill released Thursday by, among other groups, the National Iranian American Council, Project On Middle East Democracy, United4Iran, and Americans for Peace Now, the groups said:

We write to express our serious concerns with recently introduced Iran sanctions legislation – H.R.1905 and S.1048.  We take the challenges posed by Iran very seriously, including its nuclear program, its human rights situation, and its role in the Middle East.  As drafted, H.R. 1905 and S.1048 would pose a significant setback to resolving these issues.

H.R.1905 and S.1048  would effectively impose an oil embargo on Iran that could inflict economic costs on the U.S. and humanitarian costs on the Iranian people.  The bills would also weaken the President’s authority to conduct Iran policy and hinder the pursuit of a peaceful resolution to our issues with Iran.  Furthermore, these measures would undermine, not help, Iran’s human rights and democracy movement.

The House version was introduced by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla), and the Senate version by Sen. Robert Mendez (D-NJ). Both were joined by a bipartisan coterie of Mideast hawks including Sen. Mark Kirk, Congress’s top fundraiser from pro-Israel PACs, who rushed to introduce his part of the bill during AIPAC’s annual Washington conference.

As even one sanctions hawk from a neoconservative think tank has noted, measures that target the Iranian energy sector need to be carefully considered because an all-out embargo could have disastrous effects. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies‘ Mark Dubowitz recently told the Heritage Foundation:

We’re playing very delicately with a very sensitive oil market and we have to be very careful not to shoot ourselves in the face by going after Iranian crude through an embargo or through the Iran crude oil sanctions act which sends a message to the markets that we’re going to take a million barrels of crude off line next week.

In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Dubowitz and his FDD colleague Reuel Marc Gerecht (who supports an Israeli attack on Iran and has lousy pro-democracy credentials there) argued that the U.S. could create an “Iranian-Oil-Free Zone” by making it a “hassle” to trade in or use any Iranian petroleum products. One idea was that:

Any company that exports an oil-based product to America—gasoline, plastics, petrochemicals, synthetic fibers—would have to certify that no Iranian oil was involved in its manufacture.

On Thursday at the Atlantic Council event introducing the brief, Slavin said of the measure, “I’m not sure that all these things are practical.” Later, she told ThinkProgress:

What they want is a stealth embargo. And they want it to be slow and quiet so it doesn’t cause shocks to the market, but that’s what they want.

If it starts to look like a total embargo, they will lose support. It starts to look like Iraq.

In the letter to the Hill, the liberal advocacy groups also mentioned Iraq, where seven years of sanctions and an oil embargo caused so dire an economic situation that the infant mortality rate increased three-fold. Of course, that embargo didn’t work. The hawks who pushed Iraq sanctions still went on to successfully push for an invasion of the country in 2003. Perhaps those lessons are why leading Iranian opposition figures like Mehdi Karroubi oppose broad economic sanctions.

The Times of London, which has a spotty record in much of its reporting, claims to have obtained documents indicating that Iran may have begun working on a nuclear weapon as early as 2007. The widely respected David Albright, former inspector for the IAEA, was quoted saying that if the story is true than it “It looks bad — there is no doubt about it.” If confirmed, this story should strengthen the Administration’s efforts to build a coordinated international sanctions regime in response to Iran. Unfortunately, there is every likelihood that this report will be used by leaders on the Hill to push through a counterproductive sanctions bill that, instead of strengthening international resolve, will weaken it.

In the midst of its efforts to engage Iran, the Administration has been working simultaneously to build a unified international approach toward Iran – something that was sorely lacking during the Bush administration. These efforts appear to have paid dividends, as there now exists a pretty clear consensus between the US and Europe on dealing with Iran and there is even some mild optimism that Russia may support come on board as well. In the last week the European Union, France, the UK and the Obama administration all released nearly identical statements on Iran. Additionally, last month 25 countries, including all five permanent members of the UN Security Council voted to censure Iran at the IAEA for its lack of transparency on the nuclear issue. In an interview with the Middle East Bulletin, Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment, noted:

In contrast to the Bush administration, I think the Europeans, and even the Russians and Chinese, recognize that since Obama’s inauguration last June the United States has made numerous overtures to Iran, made a good-faith diplomatic effort to change the tone and context of the U.S.-Iran relationship, but Tehran was either unable or unwilling to reciprocate. For this reason the Obama administration is in a much better position to attain a robust international sanctions regime than the Bush administration was.

Despite the formation of a multilateral consensus, the US Congress now seems determined to screw things up by imposing unilateral sanctions. The sanctions bills marauding through the House and Senate threaten to undercut this international consensus. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius who participated in an Iran gaming scenario game put on by Harvard reached this conclusion as well:

The Obama team was confounded by congressional demands for unilateral U.S. sanctions against companies involved in Iran’s energy sector. This shot at Iran ended up backfiring, since some of the key companies were from Russia and China — the very nations whose support the United States needs for strong U.N. sanctions. The Russians and Chinese were so offended that they began negotiating with Tehran behind America’s back.

One of the chief problems with the effort by Congress is that for sanctions on Iran to be effective they have to have broad international backing, because the US on its own does not have enough leverage to make much of an impact. David Herbert of the National Journal described one of the major problems with Congress’ efforts to put in place gasoline sanctions last month:

It’s unclear whether the legislation will be enough to dissuade Iran’s main suppliers — Royal Dutch Shell, France’s Total, China’s state-run Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp. and Russia’s Lukoil, among others — from continuing to import gasoline. Tehran has said it will cut off any company that complies with U.S. sanctions, a threat that will keep some companies in line. And even if some gasoline exports to Iran can be curtailed, Russia and Venezuela have the excess refining capacity to plug the gap.

In other words, the sanctions bills pushed by Congress will likely backfire. Not only will they undercut the Green Movement, as Matt Duss notes, but by upsetting the delicate international consensus that currently exists on Iran, this legislation if enacted will in the end only leave Iran less isolated. In this sense, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard could not have written an oped more favorable to their interests this morning than the one penned by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinan.