Romney lobs more verbal grenades at Iran

In the talk-tough-on-Iran contest within the Republican primary, Mitt Romney keeps upping the rhetoric.

Romney repeatedly and vociferously condemned Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, before and now during his visit to New York this week. In a radio ad running in Iowa and South Carolina, he bragged that while Massachusetts governor, he refused to provide a State Police escort to former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami when he spoke at Harvard last year.

Today, in an opinion piece published in National Review Online, he says that failing to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions would dishonor the Greatest Generation and Sept. 11 victims.

"The world is looking to our leaders to meet the challenge of a rogue nation, bent on obtaining nuclear weapons," Romney writes. "Failure to do so would diminish the legacy of those who fought and died in World War II and of all victims of genocide and terror."

He calls for diplomatic isolation, stricter economic sanctions, and help from Arab countries to thwart any Iranian nuclear program. And he says Iran should be warned that if any nuclear weapons material it produces is used by terrorists, the world will exact a heavy price on Iran.

Ahmadinejad, during his visit, has repeated Iran's position that it is only pursuing civilian nuclear power.

"The response from the world would be directed not only at the terrorists, but also at the nation that supplied the fissile material," Romney writes. "And the response would be devastating."