Among the six topics CBS' Bob Schieffer has announced he plans to cover during Monday's night's third and final presidential debate is "Red Lines - Israel and Iran." With Election Day just 15 days away, that discussion cannot come soon enough for American voters. After all, while the Obama administration has consistently declared it will not allow Tehran to deploy an actual nuclear weapon, Mitt Romney has instead painted a red line at Iran "acquiring nuclear weapons capability." And with that murky standard, one the mullahs may have already crossed, a President Romney would make war with Iran inevitable.
As with so much else when it comes to Iran (his aborted pension fund divestment campaign, the need for Congressional authorization to launch military strikes, etc.) Romney's red line hasn't always been a straight one. Echoing his public appearance in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July, on September 20 Romney during a conference call with a group of rabbis and other Jewish leaders explained:

"With regards to the red line, I would image Prime Minister Netanyahu is referring to a red line over which if Iran crossed it would take military action. And for me, it is unacceptable or Iran to have the capability of building a nuclear weapon, which they could use in the Middle East or elsewhere. So for me, the red line is nuclear capability. We do not want them to have the capacity of building a bomb that threatens ourselves, our friends, and the world."

But that contradicted the position Romney articulated just days earlier. On September 14, Romney told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he has the same "red line" as President Obama:

"My red line is Iran may not have a nuclear weapon."

The Romney campaign realized that didn't square with their man's earlier line. As advisor Eliot Cohen put it, a President Romney "would not be content with an Iran one screwdriver's turn away from a nuclear weapon." The same day as his exchange with Stephanopoulos, Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul walked it back by rewriting his remarks:

"As he said this morning, Governor Romney's red line is Iran having a nuclear weapons capacity."

By the time he addressed the Virginia Military Institute two weeks ago, Romney was back to his vague formulation about Iranian capabilities:

"I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons capability."

The confused reversals have not gone unnoticed by his supporters at places like the National Review ("Romney Must Get His Nuclear Red Lines Right"). While acknowledging both that Iran has not yet violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty and that "in some sense Iran already has reached nuclear-weapons capability," the Review nevertheless endorsed Romney's statement from earlier this year:

"The Iranian regime," Romney explained in his address to the VFW national convention, "claims the right to enrich nuclear material for supposedly peaceful purposes. This claim is discredited by years of deception. A clear line must be drawn: There must be a full suspension of any enrichment, period."

While the White House has batted down reports that the U.S. is planning one-on-one negotiations with Iran, the New York Times noted Sunday that "the prospect of one-on-one negotiations could put Mr. Romney in an awkward spot, since he has opposed allowing Iran to enrich uranium to any level -- a concession that experts say will probably figure in any deal on the nuclear program." Which means that if President Romney follows through on candidate Romney's ultimatum on uranium enrichment, military conflict with Tehran is almost certain.
And the consequences of strikes against Iranian nuclear installations will be catastrophic for the United States, even if they are carried out by Israel alone. It's not just former Bush Defense Secretary Bob Gates and CIA head Michael Hayden raising those alarms. As the Times reported in March, "A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials." And in September, a bipartisan group of U.S. foreign policy leaders concluded that American attacks with the objective of "ensuring that Iran never acquires a nuclear bomb" would "need to conduct a significantly expanded air and sea war over a prolonged period of time, likely several years." (Accomplishing regime change, the authors noted, would mean an occupation of Iran requiring a "commitment of resources and personnel greater than what the U.S. has expended over the past 10 years in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.") The anticipated blowback?

Serious costs to U.S. interests would also be felt over the longer term, we believe, with problematic consequences for global and regional stability, including economic stability. A dynamic of escalation, action, and counteraction could produce serious unintended consequences that would significantly increase all of these costs and lead, potentially, to all-out regional war.

An all-out regional war, that is, if President Romney rejects the path of diplomacy and attacks Iran over its attainment of a "nuclear capability" he can neither define nor claim hasn't already occurred. Nevertheless, the messages from his allies like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham ("the time for talking with Iran is over") and from his recycled Bush advisers who brought you the war in Iraq (attack Iran "before it's too late") are as bellicose as ever.
Bellicose and, it turns out, hauntingly familiar. After all, 10 years ago we heard much the same thing.
In October 2002, President Bush pressed his case for war with Iraq by warning Americans about "the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." But with his sound bite completely debunked by the time of his State of the Union address in January 2004, Bush reworked his talking point to refer only to "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." Pressed by ABC's Diane Sawyer on the distinction between Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons," Bush sneered:

"So, what's the difference?"

The difference, of course, is the difference between war and peace. And with his ever-moving red line on the Iranian nuclear program, a President Romney seems determined to repeat Bush's mistake.