Romney: Iran is Obama's 'biggest failure'

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney branded Iran's nuclear drive as President Barack Obama's "biggest failure" and promised a very different approach if he wins the United States (US) election.

But in an interview broadcast Sunday, Mr Romney did not specify exactly how he would stiffen policy towards the Islamic Republic, at a time when talks have stalled over the West's claims that Teheran is striving for a nuclear weapon.

"Perhaps the biggest failure is as it relates to the greatest threat that America faces and the world faces, which is a nuclear Iran," Mr Romney said in the interview with NBC's Meet the Press. "The president has not drawn us further away from a nuclear Iran and, in fact, Iran is closer to having a weapon, closer to having nuclear capability than when he took office," Mr Romney said.

"President Obama had a policy of engagement with (President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad. That policy has not worked, and we're closer to a nuclear weapon as a result of that. I will have a very different approach with regards to Iran. And it's an approach which, by the way, the president's finally getting closer to. It begins with crippling sanctions. That should have been put in place long ago."