During last night’s final presidential debate, Governor Mitt Romney repeated a goal listed on his website: to have Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged with promoting genocide. The statement, intended to illustrate how much tougher Romney would be in confronting Iran over its nuclear program, instead shows several ways in which he and his campaign team neither understand the political structure of Iran nor the international justice system.

Romney was clear last night about the steps he would take diplomatically to ensure Iran’s isolation, saving his harshest terms for Ahmadinejad:

ROMNEY: Secondly, I’d take on diplomatic isolation efforts. I’d make sure that Ahmadinejad is indicted under the Genocide Convention. His words amount to genocide incitation. I would indict him for it. I would also make sure that their diplomats are treated like the pariah they are around the world. The same way we treated the apartheid diplomats of South Africa.

When asked after the debate about Romney’s genocide declaration, his advisers suggested that Ahmadinejad could be tried at the “World Court“:

According to Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, successfully indicting Ahmadinejad would be more than just a symbolic victory.

“I think it would remove probably one of the most anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, pro-genocide members of that regime in Tehran,” he told TPM after the debate. As to whether he would actually be arrested: “I’m hoping that he would be indicted and that action would unfold following that indictment. Absolutely.”

The Romney team seems discouragingly uninformed when it comes to international law, which their candidate reflected on stage. The World Court, another name for the International Court of Justice, was founded as part of the United Nations in 1945, with its headquarters in the Hague. A continuation of the Permanent Court of International Justice under the League of Nations, the ICJ settles legal disputes between states on matters such as border disputes and the use of force. Unfortunately for the Romney team, the ICJ only tries states, not individuals like Ahmadinejad.

What the campaign could have been referring to instead is the International Criminal Court, created in 2002 for just such a purpose. Its founding document, the Rome Statute, does indeed cover incitement of genocide as one of the crimes against humanity that it is able to hear. An indictment of a sitting President, such as that of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir in 2009, could take place under the Rome Statute, or the 1948 Genocide Convention as Romney seems to wish.

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In last night’s GOP presidential debate on CNN, moderator John King allowed a viewer to introduce a topic bedeviling U.S. foreign policy at the moment — Iran’s nuclear program. With war chatter on the rise, top U.S. officials have injected their opinions into the public debate.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said on Sunday that an Israeli attack on Iran was “not prudent at this point” and that such a strike would be “destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve [Israel's] long-term objectives.” When King asked Newt Gingrich if, as president, he would take Dempsey’s advice, the former House Speaker dismissed the U.S.’s top military officer opinion, saying he “can’t imagine why” Dempsey holds some of his views:

GINGRICH: Well, first of all this is two different questions. General Dempsey went on to say that he thought Iran was a rational actor. I can’t imagine why he would say that. And I just cannot imagine why he would have said it. The fact is, this is a dictator, Ahmadinejad, who has said he doesn’t believe the Holocaust existed. This is a dictator who said he wants to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth. This is a dictator who said he wants to drive the United States out of the Middle East. I’m inclined to believe dictators. Now I — I think that it’s dangerous not to.

Watch a video of King’s question and Gingrich’s full answer:

Dempsey’s views track with those of the U.N. nuclear agency and reported U.S. intelligence estimates, as well as the public testimony of the top U.S. intelligence official. On Capitol HIll last month, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said of Iran’s nuclear program: “They are certainly moving on that path, but we don’t believe they’ve actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon.”

Not only does Gingrich dismiss the opinion of the top American military officer, but he also badly misstates Iranian political dynamics. On NPR this morning, Mehdi Khalaji — an actual Iran expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy — pointed out that Iran’s actual dictator is not President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Instead, Iran is lead by a Supreme Leader, who holds the office for life and makes many of the state’s final decisions. Khalaji said:

The main decision maker on crucial issues, including the nuclear program, is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. … We have to bear in mind that he’s not only Iran’s supreme leader, he’s the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Khalaji’s latter comment means that Ahmadinejad cannot start a war — with Israel or anybody else — and that responsibility rests instead with the Supreme Leader.

If Gingrich wants to “listen to dictators” in order to justify his hawkish views, he should be free to do so. But it’s disconcerting that he doesn’t even know who the dictator is that he should be listening to.

As the Europeans passed a de facto embargo on Iranian oil and U.S. ships defied threats (since walked back) to shut down the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, Iran faces heightened diplomatic and economic isolation as another rift became apparent this week when an Iranian presidential adviser complained of cooling relations with Brazil. The report comes only four days after China voiced opposition to a potential Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Brazil, a member of a bloc of emerging economies know and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), built a strong trade relationship with Iran and involved itself in Middle East diplomacy under its last president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula, as he is widely known, attempted to broker a confidence-building deal between the West and Iran to diffuse tension over the latter’s nuclear program. But the 2010 deal came just as the Obama administration had rallied international support for another round of U.N. Security Council sanctions aimed at the nuclear program. The U.S. objected to Iran’s condition that the sanctions — since shown to be effective in slowing Iran’s progress — be scuttled.

Now, the New York Times reports, a sometime media adviser to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed anger that Iran was also losing Brazil:

After President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran took a four-country tour of Latin America this month, during which he met with several outspoken critics of the United States but was notably not invited to stop in Brazil, one of his top advisers took a public swipe at Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, saying she had “destroyed years of good relations” between the two nations.

“The Brazilian president has been striking against everything that Lula accomplished,” Ali Akbar Javanfekr, who has worked as Mr. Ahmadinejad’s top media adviser, said in an interview published Monday by Folha de São Paulo, a leading Brazilian newspaper, in which he compared Ms. Rousseff to her predecessor and political mentor.

In a New Yorker profile of Brazilian president Rousseff late last year, Nicholas Lemann wrote:

After taking office, Rousseff began to distance herself from Lula’s more exotic foreign-policy initiatives. She declared that, as someone who had been tortured, she had special concerns about a government that tortures, and that would influence Brazil’s diplomatic partnership with Iran.

Indeed, quickly after coming to office, Rousseff supported the Obama administration initiative of a U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, whose eventual report condemned Iranian rights abuses.

In addition to diplomatic fallout, the Times also noted that Iran’s robust trade relations with Brazil have recently cooled.

The report about the Iranian adviser’s comments on Brazil came on the heels of a report last week that another BRICS country spoke out forcefully against suspected Iranian designs on nuclear weapons. China’s premier Wen Jiabao said that, while trade with Iran would be maintained for the meantime, China “adamantly opposes Iran developing and possessing nuclear weapons.”

During last night’s GOP national security debate, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying that he would use a nuclear weapon to destroy both the U.S. and Israel. Neither Ahmadinejad, nor any other Iranian official, has said any such thing but this isn’t the first time Bachmann attributed the same, inaccurate, statement to Ahmadinejad.

Here’s what she said last night:

BACHMANN: Why is that we’re talking about Israel having to make a strike against Iran? It’s because Iran has announced they plan to strike Israel. They’ve stated as recently as August, just before President Ahmadinejad came to the U.N. General Assembly. He stated they wanted to eradicate Israel from the face of the Earth. He has said that if he has a nuclear weapon, he will use it to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. He will use it against the United States of America. This isn’t just an idle threat, this is a reality.

Watch it:

Bachmann’s assertion is patently false. Iran has consistently denied that it has a nuclear weapon or is seeking to build one. Just three weeks ago, ABC’s Christiane Amanpour called Bachmann out on her misstating of the same quote, saying:

AMANPOUR: Congresswoman, of course the United States is concerned about the nuclear program. Iran denies that it has one, so it hasn’t threatened to use them.

Watch it:

A simple misunderstanding of the facts, albeit a misunderstanding with potentially serious consequences, might be excused. But Bachmann’s repeated misrepresentation of Iranian positions, even after being corrected, suggests a willful strategy of attributing inaccurate and incendiary quotes to Ahmadinejad.

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton took to Fox News this morning to blast the idea of a “hotline” between Iran and the United States. Bolton is quick to dismiss the concept as cheap political ploy to heighten Iran’s “prestige”:

Well it’s not always the best course to assume the Ahmadinejad’s being entirely logical in what I will call the “Western” sense of that word. But it’s possible on the hotline, what he has in mind, is a mechanism that he thinks will enhance Iran’s prestige. After all, how many countries does the U.S. have that kind of hotline with. I think this is part of his charm offensive. It’s hard to use that phrase when he’s also accusing us of masterminding the 9/11 attacks but again, in his rather strange way, this is a signal as well to us as inside Iran to try and enhance his position in the political infighting that’s going on there.

Watch it:

While Bolton is dismissive of establishing a hotline, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last week, said:

We haven’t had a connection with Iran since 1979. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we had links to the Soviet Union. We are not talking to Iran, so we don’t understand each other. If something happens, it’s virtually assured that we won’t get it right — that there will be miscalculation which would be extremely dangerous in that part of the world. [...]

And one day before Mullen delivered his remarks, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. officials were examining the establishment of a hotline following a series of “near miss” encounters between American and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf.

Bolton dismisses the hotline as a ploy by Ahmadinejad to increase his “prestige.” But the U.S. military is increasingly voicing concern that a misunderstanding with Tehran could lead to a wider conflict in an already tense region.

Today at the United Nations General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as he has in years past — prompted a massive walkout of his speech after he dredged up a number of conspiracy theories, including that the U.S. government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

There were some other outlandish statements in Ahmadinejad’s speech. He accused some Europeans of still using the Holocaust “as the excuse to pay fine or ransom to the Zionists.” The Iranian president added that the circumstances surrounding Osama bin Laden’s death pointed to the larger 9/11 conspiracy:

“Instead of assigning a fact-finding team, they killed the main perpetrator and threw his body into the sea,” Ahmadinejad said. “Would it not have been reasonable to bring to justice and openly bring to trial the main perpetrator of the incident?

“Is there any classified information that must be kept secret?” he asked.

What was missing from Ahmadinejad’s speech? His own government violent repression of its own people, particularly during the Green Movement uprisings in 2009, as a U.S. Mission spokesperson observed:

“Mr. Ahmadinejad had a chance to address his own people’s aspirations for freedom and dignity, but instead he again turned to abhorrent anti-Semitic slurs and despicable conspiracy theories,” said Mark Kornblau, the spokesman for the US Mission to the United Nations.

Delegations from many Western nations, including France and the United States, walked out during the speech. Watch it (starting at 12:48):

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“AP Exclusive: Intel Report says Iranian president wants to develop nuclear arms openly,” reads the headline of an Associated Press story today. The report has been widely picked up with various headlines including Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth writing, “Ahmadinejad said to be pushing for open nuke work.”

The AP’s “exclusive” comes from “an intelligence assessment shared with The Associated Press” by “a nation with traditionally reliable intelligence from the region,” and depicts “Ahmadinejad as wanting to move publicly to develop a bomb.” But the AP buried the lede. Later in the article they point out that neither the intelligence assesment they viewed nor U.S. assessments put much weight on Ahmadinejad’s desire, or lack thereof, for a nuclear weapon. The real power, it would seem, lies with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It reads:

Proliferation expert David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security says his briefings from European government officials who have seen the latest U.S. intelligence assessment on the Islamic Republic seem to support the assessment shared with the AP that Khamenei is worried about how the world would react to a nuclear-armed Iran.

Indeed the real story in the AP’s “exclusive” is that Khamenei holds the power to decide if Iran will pursue a nuclear weapon, and he is deeply ambivalent about the potential benefits of doing so:

Ahmadinejad is pushing “to shake free of the restraints Iran has imposed upon itself, and openly push forward to create a nuclear bomb,” says the assessment shared with the AP. But Khamenei, whose word is final on nuclear and other issues, “wants to progress using secret channels, due to concern about a severe response from the West,” says the report. [...]

One theory voiced by government officials and private analysts is that Iran might be looking to reach the level just short of making nuclear weapons — but able to do so quickly if it feels threatened. That would fit in with Khamenei’s reported cautious stance.

In any case, Ahmadinejad seems to be further weakened by the dispute.

Reading the tea leaves of Iranian domestic politics is more of an artform than a science, but broad consensus seems to be forming the Khamenei is not in favor of the immediate acquisition of nuclear weapons and Ahamadinejad, regardless of what position he has taken on the subject, is deeply weakened politically.

Questions might be asked about why the AP, and “a nation with traditionally reliable intelligence from the region” are eager to stoke fears around Ahmadinejad’s supposed support for a nuclear weapon while, in the same assessment, acknowledging that he is increasingly irrelevant and doesn’t make the final decisions about the country’s nuclear program anyway.