Giuliani hits Democrats on Iran

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said on Friday Iranians need to realize "America will not allow them to become a nuclear power" and criticized Democrats for opposing President George W. Bush's tough stance on Iran.

But Giuliani came under fire from Mitt Romney, a rival for the Republican nomination, who said the former New York mayor lacked conservative principles and is more like front-running Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Bush's decision to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a supporter of terrorism and to impose new sanctions continued to reverberate on the campaign trail, where Iran is competing with Iraq as a major issue in the run-up to the November 2008 election.

Giuliani, speaking in Midland, Texas, where Bush used to live, sided with the president's policy and said Democrats seem to be slamming it because "no matter what the president says they would criticize it."

Giuliani said he hoped sanctions would work "but the military option is not off the table and the Iranians should understand that, that America will not allow them to become a nuclear power."

"Their regime is too irresponsible. The world would be in too much danger," he said.

On the Democratic side, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards again skewered Clinton for having voted for a Senate resolution that recommended the State Department declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, a vote that preceded Bush's move by several weeks.

"When Senator Clinton voted to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, she only aided and abetted George Bush and Dick Cheney's march to war," Edwards said.