Mitt Romney illustrates his foreign policy experience with a hand gesture (Brian Snyder/Reuters)



Mitt Romney illustrates his foreign policy experience with a hand gesture (Brian Snyder/Reuters)



Efraim Halevy, who was the director of the Mossad in the early 2000s and later the head of Israel's National Security Council, told HuffPost that by forecasting his military intentions -- and claiming that Obama would not act in the same way -- Romney is effectively "telling the Iranians, 'You better be quick about it.'" "If I'm sitting here in the month of March 2012 reading this, and I'm an Iranian leader, what do I understand? I have nine more months to run as fast as I can because this is going to be terrible if the other guys get in," Halevy said.

Beginning Nov. 4, 1979, dozens of U.S. diplomats were held hostage by Iranian Islamic revolutionaries for 444 days while America’s feckless president, Jimmy Carter, fretted in the White House. Running for the presidency against Carter the next year, Ronald Reagan made it crystal clear that the Iranians would pay a very stiff price for continuing their criminal behavior. On Jan. 20, 1981, in the hour that Reagan was sworn into office, Iran released the hostages. The Iranians well understood that Reagan was serious about turning words into action in a way that Jimmy Carter never was.

Mitt Romney isn't even the Republican nominee yet and he's already screwing things up:"In the effort to demolish the president he is making the situation worse," Halevy concluded. He was reacting to Mitt Romney's Washington Post op-ed attacking President Obama's approach to Iran. To get a sense of the utter absurdity of Romney's op-ed, here's the first paragraph:Of course, just four years later the Reagan Administration—in violation of U.S. law—sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages. And if we're really going to dive into the wayback machine, we might as well point out that the Reagan administration also forged alliances with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein . Oh, and wasn't it Feckless Ron who pulled out of Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing?

So Mitt Romney might be beating his chest loud and proud, but he's got no clue what he's talking about. And as obvious as it is that Romney rhetoric is calculated for political gain, he's going to come up short, because given the choice between President Obama's record on keeping America safe and secure and the Republican record in the eight years before Obama took office, Obama will win each and every time.