Romney largely supported the tough economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the Obama administration but said he would have imposed them earlier. The Bush administration considered tougher sanctions but concluded they could push Iran to play its oil card, doing something to spike the price of oil, hurting U.S. consumers in a down economy.

In what appeared to be a significant geographical gaffe, Romney called Syria Iran’s "route to the sea." Iran has 1,491 miles of coastline on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, across which its oil travels to reach global markets. It has another 460 miles of northern coastline on the Caspian Sea. Syria has just 119 miles of coastline, most on the Mediterranean Sea, according to the CIA Factbook.

IRAQ:

Obama criticized Romney for suggesting we should have troops in Iraq to this day. But Romney pointed out correctly that Obama was negotiating to keep a few thousand troops in Iraq. Talks on keeping U.S. troops in Iraq collapsed over Iraqi concerns about legal protection of U.S. forces. Obama later declared the war was over.

The president once again claimed that he fulfilled a promise to end the war in Iraq. In reality, all U.S. forces were required to be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011, under a timetable negotiated by the Bush administration with the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al Malaki and that as overwhelmingly approved by the Iraqi Parliament on Nov. 27, 2008. He did ensure that the timetable was met.

MILITARY MATTERS:

The president said that “military spending has gone up every single year that I’ve been in office. We spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined.”

While true that the US spends more on defense than the next 10 nations combined, the president’s contention that US defense spending has increased in each year of his administration is a half truth. While true that through this year, the base budget for the Department of Defense has increased, overall defense spending – which includes overseas contingency operations funding – has decreased, for instance from $158.8 billion in 2011 to $115.1 billion in 2012.

Romney repeated that the U.S. naval fleet is at its lowest number since 1917. This is false. The actual low, according to a U.S. Navy website, came in 2007, when the U.S. Navy ship total fell to 278. In fact, there have been several years in the past decade when the U.S. Navy has had fewer than the current 285 ships. What Romney may be referring to is a trend that began in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. Since then, the number of U.S. Navy ships steadily dropped from 592. The Navy’s plan for ship building over the next 30 years is based on building toward a size of about 300 ships.

Romney asserted that the United States has not dictated to other nations, rather it had freed them. His is right on the liberating role the U.S. foreign policy has played in numerous conflicts, but it takes the most liberal of readings of history to suggest that U.S. foreign policy has not dictated to other nations. The simple act of economic sanctions, whether they fall on Cuba, Myanmar or Iran, is precisely designed to dictate the behavior of another nation.

EGYPT:

Obama made several mentions of his administration’s support for Egyptian protesters who rose up against then-President Hosni Mubarak, an authoritarian and one of the United States’ most reliable Arab allies. Obama said letting “tanks run over those young people who were in Tahrir Square” wasn’t the kind of American leadership espoused by John F. Kennedy. His comments sidestep the fact that his administration wavered at the beginning of the Egyptian revolt, when the Egyptian security forces were using extreme force against protesters in Tahrir Square.