Last night’s presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney, the third of three such debates and explicitly devoted to foreign policy, highlighted a bipartisan American consensus regarding the unacceptability of Iran attaining nuclear weapons. Iran was mentioned 47 times, more than any other country, and both candidates explicitly insisted that Tehran’s widely perceived drive toward nuclear weapons posed a threat to U.S. national security. The debate came on a day when the Jerusalem Post, building on declarations issued last week by the U.S. undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence David S. Cohen, outlined a joint operations center via which Iranian and Al Qaeda operatives are coordinating global terrorism.

[Photo: Dimetr / Wiki Commons]