GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan criticized former Defense Secretary Robert Gates during the vice presidential debate this evening for warning about the consequences of attacking Iran over its nuclear program.

Gates — a Republican who served as Pentagon chief in both the Bush and Obama administrations — last week reiterated his warning that attacking Iran could be “catastrophic” and “make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable.”

When ABC News’s Martha Raddatz asked Vice President Biden and Ryan about Gates’ assertion, Ryan said it “undermines” American credibility:

RADDATZ: What about Bob Gates’ statement. Let me read that again. “Could prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations.”

BIDEN: He is right. It could prove catastrophic if we didn’t do it precision –

RYAN: What it does is it undermines our credibility by backing up the point when we make it that all options are on the table. That’s the point. The Ayatollahs see these kinds of statements and they think, “I’m going to get a nuclear weapon.” When we see the kind of equivacation that took place because this administration wanted a pre-condition policy so when the Green Revolution started up they were silent for 9 days. When they see us putting desperate — when they see us putting daylight between ourselves and our allies in Israel, that gives them encouragement.

Watch the clip:

Ryan was repeating a Romney campaign talking point that warning about the consequences of war with Iran only encourages the Iranian regime to move forward with an alleged nuclear weapons program (the Romney team doesn’t like discussing those consequences). Yet many experts and current and former U.S. and Israeli officials have echoed Gates’ warnings that attacking Iran would give leaders there incentive to weaponize and it could spark a regional war.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday night strongly warned against a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and urged the United States and its allies to pursue a diplomatic course to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Speaking before an audience in Norfolk, VA, Gates — a Republican who served as Pentagon chief in both the Bush and Obama administrations — said an attack would make a nuclear armed Iran more likely and have “catastrophic” consequences, the Virginian Pilot reports:

Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of wiping out Iran’s nuclear capability, he said, and “such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert.” [...]

“The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world.”

Referring to recent protests against the falling value of Iran’s currency, Gates added that the international sanctions regime facilitated by the Obama administration is beginning to have an impact on the Iranian economy. “[T]hat’s our best chance going forward, to ratchet up the economic pressure and diplomatic isolation to the point where the Iranian leadership concludes that it actually hurts Iranian security and, above all, the security of the regime itself, to continue to pursue nuclear weapons,” he said.

Gates has been warning against an attack on Iran for some time, saying back in 2008 that a war with Iran “would be disastrous” and “the last thing we need.”

But the former Defense Secretary’s comments last night echo assessments from various experts and current and former U.S. and Israeli officials that an attack would only delay Iran’s nuclear program and give leaders there incentive to weaponize — a point the New York Times picked up on last weekend. “In reports, talks, articles and interviews,” the Times reported on Sept. 30, scholars and military and arms-control experts “argue that a strike could actually lead to Iran’s speeding up its efforts, ensuring the realization of a bomb and hastening its arrival.”

A recent bipartisan expert report, whose signatories include Brent Scowcroft, ret. Adm. William Fallon, former Republican senator Chuck Hagel, ret. Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Amb. Thomas Pickering, recently concluded that an attack on Iran would only delay, not end, its nuclear program and would risk an “all-out regional war’ lasting “several years.” Aside from the military and geopolitical implications, another recently released study concluded that thousands of Iranians would die in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

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It’s now well known that after President Obama’s re-election campaign released a video wondering whether Mitt Romney would have ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden (given that Romney said in 2008 that he would not), Romney’s push back has been that it was a no-brainer. “Any thinking American would have ordered exactly the same thing,” he says.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who led the Pentagon at the time of the raid, and Vice President Biden said they advised Obama against the raid. And during a portion of an interview with Charlie Rose that aired on CBS This Morning yesterday, Gates said that “people don’t realize” how tough the decision was. PBS aired the full interview last night and Gates expounded on the consequences, saying a failed raid could have been “catastrophic” militarily and might have cost Obama re-election.

Rose then wondered if “any thinking American,” as Romney put it, would have made the same decision as Obama:

ROSE: Nobody can say “I would have made the same decision.” You don’t really know until you’re in the room and you listen to what the best people you know say to you and then you have to go as president and decide.

GATES: Right, absolutely.

Watch the clip:

Later in the interview, Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration, also disagreed with Romney’s contention that Russia is American’s “number one geopolitical foe.”

“Do you agree with Governor Romney that Russia is our principal adversary or how he’s characterized the national security issue?,” Rose asked. “No, I don`t think so,” Gates replied.

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.

Mitt Romney said during his 2008 presidential campaign that he would not act unilaterally to kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and the U.S. should not “move heaven and earth” to find him. But now, Romney says “of course” he would have done what President Obama did last year in ordering the raid that killed bin Laden at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. “Any thinking American would have ordered exactly the same thing,” Romney said earlier this month. (Vice President Biden and then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration, actually advised against the raid.)

Romney has assumed that Obama was assured of bin Laden’s presence at the compound and all he had to do was give the order to get him. But as Gates (and others) has noted, “There wasn’t any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial.” The former defense secretary expounded on the difficulty surrounding Obama’s decision this morning during an interview on CBS This Morning, particularly regarding the lack of information on bin Laden’s presence at the compound, and the ramifications if the raid failed or bin Laden wasn’t there:

ROSE: What were your concerns?

GATES: I had no doubts that the SEALs could perform the mission. My concern was whether or not he was there. People don’t realize that what made the decision tough for the president was we didn’t have once single piece of hard data that he was actually in that compound. Not one. The whole thing was a circumstantial case built by analysts at CIA.

ROSE: There was no single person who could tell you he was in that building. No single person had seen him in that building.

GATES: Right. The crux of the decision revolved less about the efficacy of the military piece of it than the consequences for us if he wasn’t there in terms of the relationship with Pakistan, in terms of the war in Afghanistan. … But I’ve always thought that it was a very courageous call. If this mission had failed, it could have put the war in Afghanistan at risk and that was one of my principle concerns.

Watch the clip:

Romney doesn’t really know much about the raid that killed bin Laden, at least that’s the sentiment he displays in public. But perhaps that’s because, as one of his foreign policy advisers has said, Romney “doesn’t want to really engage these issues until he is in office.”

Iran hawks and the GOP presidential candidates like Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have been slow to acknowledge the inherent dangers of U.S. and/or Israeli military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities while members of President Obama’s cabinet have made the case that sanctions and diplomatic pressure are the best strategy for deterring Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon.

But in remarks delivered last week at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — himself a Republican — delivered a stern warning to those who push for the “military option” against Iran.

“If you think the war in Iraq was hard, an attack on Iran would, in my opinion, be a catastrophe,” said Gates, as reported by the Jewish Exponent. Gates, who served as Defense Secretary in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, warned that Iran’s nuclear facilities would be difficult to destroy and an attack would lead Iranians to “rally behind their mullahs.”

Gates’ comments concurred with U.S., Israeli and IAEA intelligence findings on Iran’s nuclear program. “I have long been convinced that Iran is determined to develop a nuclear-weapons capability,” said the former Defense Secretary. Indeed, the intelligence reports agree that Iran is moving towards a nuclear weapons capability but that Tehran has not yet made a decision about whether to acquire nuclear weapons.

Yesterday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) warned that Iran may have “hundreds” of Hezbollah agents in the U.S. but Gates, in his remarks last week, largely disregarded the possibility of an Iranian retaliation within the U.S. if the U.S. or Israel launch a military strike on nuclear sites in Iran. “[T]he Iranian ability to attack us militarily here at home is virtually non-existent for now,” said Gates.

But retaliatory escalation from such a strike would still have a devastating impact on the U.S. and its regional allies. “[Iranian] capacity to wage a series of terror attacks across the Middle East aimed at us and our friends, and dramatically worsen the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere is hard to overestimate,” Gates said.

The Obama administration has ruled out a policy of containing a nuclear-armed Iran but, in views concurrent with those expressed by Gates, has emphasized that a diplomatic solution is “the best and most permanent way” to relieve mounting tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

The Republican candidates for president have largely settled on two common themes throughout the campaign thus far: that President Obama is ushering in American decline, both at home and abroad, and that the United States should confront Iran militarily over its nuclear program. “Internationally, we have witnessed a weakening of our military and a decline in our standing in the world,” Mitt Romney said in December. While Romney has gone back and forth the in using harsh rhetoric on Iran this campaign season, his competitors aren’t so shy about using bellicose rhetoric. Rick Santorum said attacking Iran is part of his plan.

Last night on CNN, host John King asked former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican who served in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, about the GOP charges. While Gates noted that America’s economic standing has been in flux for decades, he called the charge that the President is overseeing American military decline “ridiculous” and later said the GOP’s militaristic rhetoric on Iran is “irresponsible”:

GATES: Are we talking about relative role economically in the world? Because that’s been going down for 60 years. It was an unnatural situation to begin with. If we’re talking about military power, I think that’s ridiculous. Our military power has nothing comparable to it anywhere in the world or any combination of nations that come anywhere close to our military power. [...]

And those who say we should underestimate the consequences of going to war [with Iran]. This is, I think, one of the toughest foreign policy problems I have ever seen since entering the government 45 years ago. And I think to talk about it loosely or as though these are easy choices in some way or sort of self-proclaimed, obvious alternatives, I just think is irresponsible.

Watch the clip:

Jeffrey Goldberg’s report on a meeting of National Security Council Principals Committee (NSC/PC), in which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates expressed frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intransigence on the peace process and the fact that “the U.S. has received nothing in return” for its security guarantees, might raise more questions than it answers.

What Goldberg didn’t mention is the historical and conceptual context for Gates’ remarks. Indeed, Gates is not the first senior American official to express concern that the protraction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and the perception of U.S. favoritism toward Israel on this issue — was offering few, if any, dividends for U.S. security or its own regional interests.

Back in March, 2010, Gen. David Petraeus made waves when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had immediate implications for the U.S.’s ability to pursue its interests in the Middle East. He named some of these problems:

Insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace. The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.

Israel hawks quickly denounced Petraeus’ comments and have continued to attack a straw man argument that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wouldn’t solve all challenges facing the U.S. in the Middle East.

But Petraeus wasn’t the only senior U.S. official to endorse the concept of “linkage” between resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the longer-term strategic interests of the U.S. in the Middle East. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CENTCOM commander Gen. James Mattis, and Adm. Michael Mullen — via a WikiLeaks cable — have voiced endorsements of this concept.

While Jeffrey Goldberg — who has a history of rejecting linkage — carefully reports on Gates’ anger with Netanyahu for delivering “nothing in return” for security guarantees, access to weapons, and intelligence sharing, he is careful to sidestep the obvious next question. Why does Gates feel strongly about Netanyahu refusing to “grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank”?

Goldberg doesn’t engage that topic. It might be because Gates shares the emerging consensus of the U.S.’s top military and political leadership that Israel’s continued settlement expansion and intransigence at the negotiating table is doing real damage to the Obama administration’s attempts to pursue a wide range of military and political interests in the Middle East.

In a column for Bloomberg that was published last night, author Jeffrey Goldberg reports that a well-placed source informed him of a meeting with the National Security Council Principals Committee (NSC/PC) that took place earlier this year where former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates lamented that Israel was failing to take steps towards peace and was ungrateful for all of the support the United States provided it.

Goldberg says Gates told NSC/PC that the United States was providing a wide array of aid and intelligence sharing with Israel and that it was giving “nothing in return” to the United States, particularly with respect to the peace process. Gates also argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was endangering his own country by obstructing peace. Goldberg says his sources say that no one at the meeting challenged Gates’s view:

But it was Robert M. Gates, the now-retired secretary of defense, who seemed most upset with Netanyahu. In a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held not long before his retirement this summer, Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has taken to guarantee Israel’s security — access to top- quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing — and then stated bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in return, particularly with regard to the peace process.

Senior administration officials told me that Gates argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis met with no resistance from other members of the committee.

Gates’s reported lamentations seem to match those of former CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus. Last year, Petraeus reportedly warned that Israeli foreign policy behavior was unbecoming and threatening American security.

Netanyahu aides responded to Goldberg’s report today, saying, “we have wide support in Congress.”