Election-year politics is triggering too many rash statements about Iran. It is time to dial back the rhetoric, which already is sounding eerily like the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, an unnecessary war begun under false pretenses. This is a dangerous game.

The same folks who promoted preventive war against Iraq now are beating the war drums for attacking Iran.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, sounds nearly hysterical about Iran: "So, my view of military force would be not to just neutralize their nuclear program … but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard," he said at an international security forum in November. "In other words, neuter that regime." The audience was stunned.

He also told CBS' "Face the Nation" in November, "If they get a nuclear weapon the world is going to go into darkness." This is beyond exaggeration. No country, not even North Korea, has used nuclear weapons for offensive purposes.

Not to be outdone, Republican presidential candidates also are piling on the hyperbole.

Mitt Romney describes Iran as "the greatest threat that the world faces over the next decade."

Rick Santorum has called Iran's nuclear scientists "enemy combatants," like al-Qaida. He would work with Israel on pre-emptive strikes, being "very clear with Iran that we are preparing a military strike, an airstrike, on those facilities."

Newt Gingrich believes a bombing campaign to take out the nuclear program is a "fantasy," but he would launch such a campaign "as a step toward replacing the regime."

Jon Huntsman believes war with Iran is inevitable: "You can layer sanction upon sanction and I think in the end the sanctions aren't going to have much of an impact."

The lone exception has been Ron Paul: "I'm afraid what's going on right now is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq." Unfortunately, his uniformly isolationist stance makes it difficult for him to influence the larger debate.

Iran has pursued nuclear technology on and off since the 1950s, but does not have nuclear weapons. It halted nuclear weapons efforts in 2003, according to the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate in 2007. U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress in March that Iran could eventually decide to build nuclear weapons, but has not done so.

Iran is enriching uranium – currently low-grade levels of 20 percent, nowhere near weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. The International Atomic Energy Agency report in November concluded that such activity "down the road could give Iran the capability to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so."

In short, you have U.S. politicians calling for pre-emptively bombing a country for a latent capability – that is, for looking like it could build nuclear weapons if it wanted to. That is flimsy in the extreme.

For the most part, the Obama administration has acted responsibly – continuing naval deployment in the Persian Gulf region to ensure open navigation and pursuing sanctions to put pressure on Iran to forgo nuclear weapons development.

These are having an effect. Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria points out, "In fact, the real story is that Iran is weak and getting weaker. Sanctions have pushed its economy into a nose-dive. The political system is fractured and fragmenting. Abroad, its closest ally and the regime of which it is almost the sole supporter – Syria – is itself crumbling. The Persian Gulf monarchies have banded together against Iran and shored up their relations with Washington."

But the Obama administration has had missteps. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta muddied the waters in December by telling CBS News that Iran would need a year or less to assemble a weapon – though he qualified this by saying he has no indication that the Iranians have made the decision to go ahead. The Pentagon the next day backtracked, saying Panetta was speaking "hypothetically."

His comments were "not helpful" and "definitely misleading," according to David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

Warmongering talk and exaggeration of Iranian capabilities is far from harmless. Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, has said that if we beat the war drums for months but don't attack, war advocates "will then argue that U.S. credibility is on the line and we have to strike, lest those dangerous Iranians conclude we are paper tigers."

This is a time for restraint, persistent pressure and careful observation of Iran – not swagger.

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