It is said that, to Washington’s neoconservative pundits, every problem looks a nail, and they have just the hammer: military force. Washington Post columnist and Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer nicely encapsulated this concept last night on Bill O’Reilly’s show when he said that the U.S. should have sent “weaponry” to the pro-democracy movement that erupted in Iran after the fraudulent presidential elections of June 2009.

Krauthammer said that President Obama should have ramped up rhetoric against Iran during the brutal crackdown on the Green Movement — the distinctly non-violent protest movement born out of Mir Hossien Moussavi’s failed 2009 presidential campaign. And when O’Reilly asked what else Obama could have done, Krauthammer said he should have armed the protesters and order a covert war against Iran:

O’REILLY: But what else could he have done except rhetoric?

KRAUTHAMMER: Weaponry — he could have done a lot of things. Rhetoric is one thing and not to support the legitimacy of the regime. Clandestine operations. Why do we have $50 billion in secret operations in the CIA if not for an opportunity like this? He was hands off. He did nothing and we lost one of the great opportunities in history.

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Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his ideological comrades have made President Obama’s reaction to the 2009 post-election Iranian government crackdown on Green Movement demonstrators a centerpiece of their criticisms. Romney’s campaign issue page for Iran says Obama “refrained from supporting the nascent Green Movement.” In a Washington Post op-ed, Romney wrote that he would “speak out on behalf of the cause of democracy in Iran and support Iranian dissidents who are fighting for their freedom.”

In reality, Obama didn’t, as Krauthammer put it, “support the legitimacy of the [Iranian] regime.” Daniel Larison has pointed out that, when failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum made the same charge, that unlike many world governments, Obama never recognized the elections. Furthermore, Obama condemned the abuses against demonstrators that June.

But more to the point, one hopes that Romney does not conflate symbolic “fighting” for freedom with literal fighting. Unlike in Syria and Libya, the Green Movement in Iran never took up arms. As Ardeshir Amirarjmand, a top adviser to Moussavi now in exile in France, told an audience at MIT last year, “We do not have any other choice than a nonviolent path toward democracy.” Or, as University of Toronto professor Ramin Jahanbegloo put it, “The Green Movement faces a troubling situation, but it is banking on its strategy of nonviolence as moral capital.” Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi — who, like Iranian civil society as a whole, opposes attacking Iran — told ThinkProgress in 2010 that she disagreed with critics who said that Obama should have spoken more forcefully in support of the Green movement in June 2009.

Krauthammer worries that Obama is not doing enough to support Iran’s democracy movement. But it’s perfectly clear that the Green Movement doesn’t want the kind of support — weapons and covert war — that Krauthammer is offering.

Mitt Romney adviser and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton is no stranger to hawkish rhetoric when it comes to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. In January he called for an outright war, telling Fox news “the better way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to attack its nuclear weapons program directly” and, in February, he fanned the flames of war even further, saying, “I don’t think it’s in our interest to stay out” of a war between Israel and Iran.

But while Bolton and his fellow hawks are welcome to assert their own hypotheses about Iran’s nuclear intentions and how the U.S. should respond, the facts about U.S. and IAEA intelligence findings on Iran’s nuclear program are not a matter for debate. Today, Bolton made a completely unsubstantiated assertion about intelligence findings on Iran’s nuclear program, telling Fox News:

Look, if anybody thinks this is for peaceful purposes there are a lot of bridges for sale in New York and the intelligence on this is unambiguous. The International Atomic Energy information on what Iran’s been up to is unambiguous. This is a charade driven by the Obama administration’s need to find something to pressure Israel not to use military force against the Iranian program.

Watch it:

But U.S. and IAEA reports have never shown claims of an Iranian nuclear weapons to be “unambiguous.” In fact, the IAEA has raised questions about possible dual-military-civilian use nuclear technologies but they have not concluded that Iran has decided to restart its nuclear weapons program after its suspension in 2003.

And Israeli and U.S. intelligence reports concur with the assessment that there is no “unambiguous” evidence that Iran has restarted its nuclear weapons program. In February, Director of National Intelligence told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had doubts about Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon and that “they’re keeping themselves in a position to make that decision but there are certain things they have not done for some time.”

The Associated Press reported in March that, “Several senior Israeli officials who spoke in recent days to The Associated Press said Israel has come around to the U.S. view that no final decision to build a bomb has been made by Iran.”

Furthermore, Bolton’s claim that the U.S. is only playing for time in negotiations with Iran is contradicted by President Obama’s unambiguous commitment to “preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” and assertion that it was “unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” But while the president has outlined the threat an Iranian nuclear weapon poses to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, the Obama administration believes that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

But all this probably won’t stop Romney from seeking out Bolton’s advice. “I look forward to consulting with him as we campaign to restore America’s standing abroad and ensure that this century is an American Century,” Romney said of Bolton back in January.

This morning on MSNBC, former Secretary of State Colin Powell criticized Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team for being “quite far to the right.” Romney has been “catching a lot of heck from the more regular GOP foreign affairs community. We’re kind of taken aback by it,” Powell said.

Later on the same network, the retried four-star U.S. Army general, referring to Romney’s claim that Russia is America’s “number one geopolitical foe,” had some advice for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee — cut out the hyperbole when talking about foreign policy:

POWELL: I think he really needs to not just accept these cataclysmic sort of pronouncements. I think he really needs to think carefully about these statements because they’re now on the wall for people to see. … Let’s not go creating enemies where none yet exist. Does this mean that we should trust Putin or Medvedev? No. Let’s be mature people and look at the reality of the situation and not find ways to see if we can hyperbolize the situation.

Host Andrea Mitchell noted that Romney is attacking President Obama on his Iran policy, saying he’s “showing weakness.”

“Well I don’t know what Mr. Romney would prefer to do,” Powell said, “The fact of the matter is we need a negotiated solution and the only way you can get a negotiated solution is to talk to the other side.” Watch the clip:

Vice President Biden also recently chastised Romney for his militaristic rhetoric. “[L]oose talk about a war has incredibly negative consequences in our efforts to end Iran’s nuclear quest,” he said, adding that if war with Iran is “what governor Romney means by a ‘very different policy’ then he should tell the American people.”

And if Powell doesn’t know “what Mr. Romney would prefer to do” on Iran, as he said today on MSNBC, neither does anyone else. Romney has no real policy on Iran that differs much from the current administration’s approach. The New York Times reported recently that “when pressed on how, exactly, his strategy would differ from Mr. Obama’s, Mr. Romney had a hard time responding.”

In an announcement that could signal a breakthrough in resolving suspicions over Iran’s nuclear program, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Yukiya Amano announced today that a deal has been reached allowing IAEA inspectors to restart a long-stalled probe into Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Amano, whose announcement comes a day before Iran and the P5+1 begin talks in Baghdad over Iran’s disputed uranium enrichment, is understood to have secured IAEA inspectors access to the Parchin military complex, where the agency believes Iran tested a nuclear weapon triggering device nine years. Iran has dismissed those claims and denied inspectors access, telling the IAEA that the military complex was sufficiently inspected by the agency in 2005.

Amano acknowledged that “some differences” remain with Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili but that the “decision was made to conclude and sign the agreement.”

The agreement is likely to influence the upcoming negotiations in Baghdad at which Iran is expected to seek an easing of economic sanctions — including an embargo on oil deals starting July 1 and new banking restrictions.

Indeed, the new agreement, which is expected to allow inspectors access to previously closed off sites, may pressure the U.S. and other U.N. Security Council countries to offer some form of concessions in exchange for the new access to suspected nuclear sites.

The U.N. has called for a full suspension of Iranian uranium enrichment during the negotiation process but there is growing speculation that the P5+1 may accept low-uranium enrichment — under 20 percent — if inspectors are allowed access to all suspected sites.

The possibility of a brokered agreement in which IAEA inspectors gain access to all facilities and Western powers either postpone or cancel upcoming sanctions in exchange for Iran reducing its nuclear enrichment to under 20-percent could offer a face-saving outcome for both the Iranian government — which could claim victory for its domestic audience — and the U.S. and its allies.

However, Robert Wood, the U.S. envoy to the IAEA, expressed skepticism in a statement, saying Washington remained “concerned by the urgent obligation for Iran to take concrete steps to cooperate fully with the verification efforts of the IAEA, based on IAEA verification practices.”

While the U.S. and other Security Council member countries may be more open to a negotiated agreement, President Obama has committed to “preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” and emphasized that it is “unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” IAEA inspectors have raised questions about possible dual-military-civilian use nuclear technologies but they have not concluded that Iran has decided to restart its nuclear weapons program after its suspension in 2003.

A new poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project finds that 63 percent of respondents in the U.S. “would turn to military force to prevent Iran from going nuclear.” But the pollsters questions contain unproven assumptions about the effectiveness of military strikes and suggest that failure to act militarily may hasten an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Respondents were asked to choose [PDF, page 27] between “preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action,” or “avoiding a military conflict with Iran, even if means Iran may develop nuclear weapons.” Built into these questions is the assumption that military action can prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or, conversely, that the lack of military action may ensure an Iranian nuclear weapon. Policy experts in Israel and the U.S. have consistently challenged this understanding of the Iranian nuclear showdown.

Last month, former Israeli internal security chief Yuval Diskin warned that :

[Israel's leadership] presents a false view to the public on the Iranian bomb, as though acting against Iran would prevent a nuclear bomb. But attacking Iran will encourage them to develop a bomb all the faster.

Indeed, the pollsters at Pew could take some lessons from Diskin about avoiding false trade-offs between bombing Iran and preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon. They could also have listened to Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor who observed that “an attack on Iran wouldn’t add anything to our security.” Or they could have watched former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan’s warnings on 60 Minutes that an attack on Iran would “ignite regional war” and “there’s no military attack that can halt the Iranian nuclear project. It could only delay it.”

In the U.S., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasized that “giving diplomacy a chance” is the best “way forward,” and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. (appointed by George H.W. Bush) Thomas Pickering warned that “[A military strike] has a very high propensity, in my view, of driving Iran in the direction of openly declaring and deciding [...] to make a nuclear weapon.”

Finally, and from perhaps the least political source, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) found that “an attack could have considerable regional and global security, political, and economic repercussions” but “it is unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be on the likelihood of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.”

This uncertainty was nowhere to be found in Pew’s questions which posed a clear tradeoff between taking military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and “avoiding a military conflict” at the expense of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. This tradeoff presented to poll respondents fails to take into account the overwhelming evidence that no such trade-off exists. President Obama has committed to “preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” and said it was “unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” But the willingness of politicians and pollsters to portray a tradeoff between military action and Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon promotes an inaccurate set of policy choices which, ultimately, may undermine efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Senate Republican hawk Lindsey Graham (SC) said on Fox News last night that the U.S. shouldn’t negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program until it accedes to all U.S. demands and gives up its nuclear program entirely. The remark comes after a week where Congress considered a flurry of hawkish legislation and resolutions about Iran ahead of the next round of nuclear talks next week in Baghdad.

Graham offered his curious take on what it means to negotiate — demanding that Iran accept all U.S. demands prior to negotiation — in a conversation with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, who indicated that his negotiating tactic was probably a non starter. Graham first emphasized his hawkish bent by noting that the “only way” for an agreement to be reached between the sides was for the U.S. to threaten “a strike by the United States.” He went on:

GRAHAM: Here’s what we should do. We should tell the Iranians, no negotiations, stop enriching, open up the site on the bottom of the mountain, a secret site. Then we will talk about lifting sanctions. You are not going to get to enrich uranium any more, period.

VAN SUSTEREN: I think they will probably stay “go fish” on that one.

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Leave aside that the Fordow site is not “secret” (it’s under U.N. inspections and monitored by camera) and that reports on U.S. and Israeli estimates state that these intelligence agencies don’t believe Iran has made a decision to build nuclear weapons (Graham doubts the intelligence), Graham’s position prompts one to ask: What’s the alternative to negotiations, since Graham is proposing pre-conditions that Iran would never meet? The Senator from South Carolina’s been busy on that front, too — and falsely citing the Obama administration to back himself up. The House yesterday passed a resolution that seeks to shift U.S. “red line” for an attack to an Iranian “nuclear capability” — something Graham mentioned on Fox News — from an Iranian push for nuclear weapons.

While the CIA has laid out a specific definition, 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 Sentae’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.”

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The former Secretary of Defense to the George W. Bush and Obama administrations Robert Gates said in an interview on CBS aired this morning that getting Iran to give up any potential ambitions to nuclear weapons was the “only good option” for dealing with the nuclear standoff with the West. He warned that an Israeli attack on Iran could spark a regional war.

Interviewer Charlie Rose asked Gates about his comment that Iran was the toughest challenge he has faced. Gates suggested, in line with the Obama administration, that a diplomatically negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis was the sole way to deal with the issues without major drawbacks. Gates said:

GATES: The only good option is putting enough pressure on the Iranian government that they make the decision for themselves that continuing to seek nuclear weapons is actually harming the security of the country and, perhaps more importantly to them, putting the regime itself at risk. And there are signs that those sanctions are beginning to really bite and some much more severe European Union sanctions will come into effect this summer.

ROSE: What if Israel does it on its own?

GATES: That would be worse than us doing it. Because I think that then has lots of regional complications that may end up in a much larger Middle East conflict. So I think that would be worse.

Watch the video:

Gates has offered warnings about attacking Iran before, declaring that even a U.S. strike would be a “catastrophe.” So his statement that an Israeli strike would be “worse” is significant. And a Pentagon wargame reported by the New York Times this year found the U.S. got dragged into the conflict after an Israeli strike.

A top U.S. security thinktank that advises the Pentagon released an article in its journal yesterday advising against a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran. The article from the RAND Corporation by, among others, top former U.S. diplomat James Dobbins, noted that a strike “would make it more, not less, likely that the Iranian regime would decide to produce and deploy nuclear weapons” — in line with assessements from some top former Israeli officials. The RAND article called for more U.S.-Israeli cooperation and for the U.S. to quietly “support the assessments of former and current Israeli officials who have argued against a military option.” Many former top Israeli security officials have criticized Israel’s hawkish government for an eagerness to attack Iran without dealing with potential consequences of such an attack.

Gates seemed to be using shorthand when discussing Iran’s “continuing to seek nuclear weapons.” While a potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime, reports on U.S. and Israeli estimates state that these intelligence agencies don’t believe Iran has made a decision to build nuclear weapons. Those estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. American officials including President Obama vow to keep “all options on the table” to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, but 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.

The New York Times published two articles this weekend highlighting the disarray that is Mitt Romney’s foreign policy positions. Romney not only appears “out of touch,” for example, on his Russia policy and “all over the map” on the war in Afghanistan, but also, the former Massachusetts governor has demonstrated a “perplexing pattern,” the Times reported, of being at odds with many of his own foreign policy advisers.

Moreover, seeming to concede President Obama’s dominance of national security issues this campaign season, a Romney adviser told the Times that Romney isn’t interested in talking about foreign policy. “Romney doesn’t want to really engage these issues until he is in office,” the adviser said.

And there’s good reason. Romney’s inexperience on foreign policy and national security issues has dogged his campaign with confusion, ignorance and private and public disagreements among Romney’s campaign advisers and surrogates:

AFGHANISTAN

Romney has been “all over the map” on Afghanistan. As the Washington Post reported late last year, Romney “has not explained what he thinks the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is at this point and what would constitute success.” And keeping with his adviser’s above statement, Romney said in a major foreign policy speech that he’d wait until becomes president to “order a full review of our transition to the Afghan military.”

Romney also says that the U.S. should not be negotiating with the Taliban, a position that puts him at odds with his top national security campaign surrogate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), his own advisers and even former top Bush administration officials. “Romney’s supporters and foreign policy advisers argue that after a decade at war, the only option is a political settlement,” the Times noted.

IRAN

Romney said that if Obama is re-elected, Iran will get a nuclear weapon. “If you elect me as president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” he said. That line “caused some of his advisers to cringe” the Times reported this weekend. But overall, again, Romney has no real policy on Iran that differs much from the current administration’s approach. Romney has proposed much of what Obama is already doing. The Times noted that “when pressed on how, exactly, his strategy would differ from Mr. Obama’s, Mr. Romney had a hard time responding.”

But Romney does occasionally ramp up bellicose rhetoric on Iran which prompted a former Israeli Mossad director to say the former Massachusetts governor “is making the situation worse” with Iran. Romney has ignored what the IAEA, U.S. and Israeli intelligence think about Iran’s nuclear program and his campaign advisers even attacked the Obama administration for public discussion of the consequences of attacking Iran.

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