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INDIANOLA, Iowa — With Senator Bernie Sanders’s domestic message of tackling income inequality giving him momentum here, Hillary Clinton sought Thursday to shift the conversation to foreign policy, portraying her rival as inexperienced and ill-equipped to address the firestorms erupting in the Middle East.

“Senator Sanders doesn’t talk very much about foreign policy,” Mrs. Clinton told a crowd. “And when he does, it raises concerns because sometimes, it can sound like he hasn’t really thought it through.”

With a new CNN/ORC poll showing Mr. Sanders leading Mrs. Clinton in Iowa by eight percentage points, Mrs. Clinton and her campaign aides have pointed to Mr. Sanders’s proposal, which was discussed during Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Charleston, S.C., that Iranian troops help in efforts to defeat the Islamic State in Syria. Mrs. Clinton has likened the proposal to “asking the arsonists to be the firefighter.”

The Clinton campaign has recently seized on his remarks, and has released a video in which Jake Sullivan, the campaign’s senior policy adviser, puts Mr. Sanders’s plan in the context of protecting Israel.

“Normal relations with Iran right now?” Mr. Sullivan says. “President Obama doesn’t support the idea. Secretary Clinton doesn’t support that idea. And it’s not at all clear why it is that Senator Sanders is suggesting it.”

Later, in a conference call with reporters, Mr. Sullivan was more direct: “Many of you know Iran has pledged the destruction of Israel.”

Iran may seem a world away from Iowa, which will hold the nation’s first nominating contest Feb. 1, but by evoking Mr. Sanders’s remark, the campaign hopes to underscore its broader message that Mrs. Clinton is the best-prepared candidate to handle any crisis, domestic or foreign.

“The challenges a president has to grapple with are beyond complicated, both at home and abroad,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I’ve seen it up close, and I know what it takes.”

At a town hall on Thursday afternoon in Vinton, Mrs. Clinton spent much of her speech reminding the audience of her experience advising President Obama on critical national security issues, including when then President George W. Bush’s national security team received a warning of a threat during Mr. Obama’s 2009 inauguration, and in the raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.

“Think about what the next president will be dealing with,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Some of it we can already analyze, think about, but some of it we have to imagine.”

In a phone interview on Thursday, Mr. Sanders said the Clinton campaign was taking his words out of context, saying that he meant that normalization with Iran was a worthy “goal,” but not something that should happen right away.

“I’m not saying it’s going to happen tomorrow. I’m not going to say it is going to happen in 10 years, I don’t know, it depends,” Mr. Sanders said. “Obviously, I have very, very serious concerns about the behavior of Iran in many areas — in their support of terrorism, etc.”

But he said that just as the United States had reached a point where it was comfortable normalizing relations with Cuba, normalization with Iran was “something I hope we can achieve.”

Asked specifically if he had called for more Iranian ground troops in Syria, Mr. Sanders said: “Not that I can — no. What I have said is that I would like to see — and I understand, believe me, that Iran and Saudi Arabia hate each other — but to the degree that we can create a process where Muslim countries can come together to fight ISIS, that is a positive thing.”

(Mr. Sanders said last November that “Muslim nations in the region — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Jordan” needed to “get their hands dirty, their boots on the ground.”)

The Clinton strategy on this front raises the risk of deterring powerful supporters of Israel from embracing Mr. Sanders should he capture the nomination.

Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, called Mr. Sanders “the very caricature that Republicans like to put forward” of Democrats.

In her 2008 presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton tried to portray Mr. Obama as naïve about foreign policy when he pledged to open diplomatic channels to the Iranians — a prism through which Republicans continue to view Mr. Obama.

The back and forth on the campaign trail somewhat oversimplifies Mr. Obama’s position.

Mrs. Clinton is correct that no one in the Obama administration — either when she served as secretary of state or since she left — is discussing full normalization of relations with Iran.

But at the same time, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton’s successor as secretary of state, John Kerry, have often talked of the benefits of a more normal relationship with Iran.

Mr. Kerry’s relationship with Iran’s American-educated foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, helped smooth the way to last week’s release of 10 sailors who drifted into Iranian waters and the prisoner swap announced last weekend.

That kind of intense interchange had not taken place since 1979, and many see it as a step toward routine cooperation, even if formal diplomatic relations are years away.

“I congratulate President Obama and his team, and I’m proud of the role I played to get this process started,” Mrs. Clinton said last week after news broke that the prisoners would be freed.

After the rally here, a woman rushed to the rope line to shake her hand. “I was for Bernie, but you convinced me!” the woman, Kathy Kellman, a 72-year-old retiree, shouted at Mrs. Clinton.

“Oh, thank you, I really appreciate that so much and I’ll work really hard for you,” Mrs. Clinton replied.

Asked by a reporter what, specifically, made her change her mind, Ms. Kellman did not hesitate: “I think she’s better informed internationally.”

David Sanger and Jason Horowitz contributed reporting from Washington.