Republican presidential nominee John McCain has castigated Democratic opponent Barack Obama in a new television ad released last Wednesday, accusing the Illinois senator of downplaying the threat of Iran.

The McCain ad featured several photographs including one of Iranian President Ahmadi-nejad with a sign that read, “Don’t forget to say Death to America.”

The McCain ad script said: “Iran. Radical Islamic government. Known sponsors of terrorism. Developing nuclear capabilities to ‘generate power’ but threatening to eliminate Israel. Obama says Iran is a ‘tiny’ country, ‘doesn’t pose a serious threat.’ Terrorism, destroying Israel, those aren’t ‘serious threats?’ Obama – dangerously unprepared to be president.”

The ad highlights quotes taken out-of-context from remarks made by Obama in May, in which he said Iran, Cuba and Venezuela were "tiny" countries compared to the Soviet Union when Washington chose diplomacy to deal with the Cold War.

“Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries,” Obama said then. “I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela – these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, ‘We’re going to wipe you off the planet.”

Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan responded to the McCain ad by linking the Arizona senator to the foreign policy of unpopular President George W. Bush.

"John McCain is distorting Barack Obama's words to cover up for the fact that it's the failed Bush-McCain approach to foreign policy and the Bush-McCain war in Iraq that have strengthened Iran and endangered Israel. While Barack Obama recognizes that Iran has been the biggest beneficiary of the war in Iraq and that the Bush-McCain fear of tough diplomacy has allowed Iran to spin 3,800 centrifuges, threaten Israel, and fund terrorism, John McCain promises more of the same.”

Campaigning in Iowa on his way to the Democratic convention in Denver late last month, Obama said, “I will tell you, having visited Israel just a month and a half ago, their general attitude is, ‘We will not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.’ My job as president would be to try to make sure we are tightening the screws diplomatically on Iran, that we mobilize the world community to go after Iran’s nuclear program in a serious way ... We have to do it before Israel feels its back is against the wall.”

During his address to the Democratic National Convention last Thursday night, Obama addressed McCain’s foreign policy plan of fighting terrorism and containing Iran. “You don’t defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq. You don’t protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington ... If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice, but it is not the change we need,” Obama said, adding that he would “renew the tough, direct diplomacy with Iran.”

Republicans saved some of their criticism for Obama’s running mate Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In an article published by the Washington Post,” Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote, “Biden’s unyielding pursuit of ‘engagement’ with Iran for more than a decade has made it easier for Tehran to pursue its nuclear program, while his partisan obsession with thwarting the Bush Administration has led him to oppose tough sanctions against hard-liners in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,” citing Biden’s numerous efforts in the past to promote parliamentary exchanges with Iran’s Majlis.