Obama to GOP rivals: War in Iran "not a game"
Updated 4:58 p.m. Eastern Time
(CBS News) At a news conference at the White House on Tuesday, President Obama lashed out at Mitt Romney and the other GOP presidential candidates for "the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war," saying their rhetoric on Iran reflects the fact that they "don't have a lot of responsibilities."The president was asked about Romney's claim that "If Barack Obama gets re-elected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon." He responded first by pointing to his record, saying his administration has imposed "crippling sanctions" against Iran that have isolated the nation in an "unprecedented" way and significantly damaged its government economically.
He went on to say that while "we will not countenance Iran getting a nuclear weapon," he believes that "we have a window of opportunity where this can still be resolved diplomatically." He later said he does not believe that a decision by Israel on whether to attack must be made in the next two months, saying increasingly tough sanctions should have more time to work.
"Because sanctions are starting to have significant effect inside of Iran -- and that's not just my assessment, that's, I think, a uniform assessment -- because the sanctions are going to be even tougher in the coming months, because they're now starting to affect their oil industry, their central bank, and because we're now seeing noises about them returning to the negotiating table, that it is deeply in everybody's interests, the United States, Israel and the world's, to see if this can be resolved in a peaceful fashion," he said.
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The president also criticized the rhetoric coming from the GOP presidential candidates.