AFP, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 12 Nov 2011 – Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney guaranteed Saturday that, if elected, he would stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons while President Barack Obama would not.
‘If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if we elect Mitt Romney, if you elect me as the next president, they will not have a nuclear weapon,’ he said at a foreign policy debate with his rivals.
Romney, fighting with former pizza chain executive Herman Cain for the lead of the crowded field, added that ‘if there’s nothing else we can do beside take military action then of course you take military action.’
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich called for ‘maximum covert operations’ against Iran, including ‘taking out their scientists’ and disrupting what Tehran insists is a civilian energy program but the West charges is a weapons drive.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN atomic watchdog, said Tuesday it had ‘serious concerns’ based on ‘credible’ information that Iran has ‘carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.’
Cain said he would provide US aid to domestic foes of the regime, work ‘with our friends and our allies’ to beef up economic sanctions on Iran, and stressed ‘the only way we can stop them is through economic means.’
But former Republican senator Rick Santorum said the United States ‘should be working with Israel right now to do what they did in Syria, what they did in Iraq, which is take out that nuclear capability before the next explosion we hear in Iran is a nuclear one — and then the world changes.’
Republican Representative Ron Paul said it was ‘not worthwhile’ to go to war to halt Iran’s suspect nuclear program, and compared the heated US rhetoric against Tehran to the flawed case for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
‘I’m afraid what’s going on right now is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq. You know, they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction and it was orchestrated,’ he warned.
The comments came as the candidates held their first debate focused on foreign policy, sponsored by CBS television and the National Journal publication focused on public policy.