I have little interest in inserting myself, as a former nominee of my party, into this presidential campaign season. But as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has a vital role in issues of national security, I feel compelled to respond to the ways that, in pursuit of the Republican nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has put himself front and center in debates that have serious consequences.

In 2010, Romney inserted himself into Senate consideration of the New START Treaty and sharpened his newly minted conservative credentials on this page by authoring a series of blisteringly inaccurate assertions about the treaty. In so doing, he separated himself from former Republican secretaries of state James Baker, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice; discarded the wisdom of former Republican defense secretaries such as Robert Gates; and pitted himself against former president George H.W. Bush. Fortunately, a third of Senate Republicans disagreed with him and voted to make America safer. Americans will ultimately decide whether 71 senators and so many Republican foreign policy hands were right — or whether Candidate Romney knew something they didn’t.

Today Romney’s goal remains winning the acquiescence of his party’s base — but his target is different: Iran. It is deja vu. While wise Republicans stress the perils of loose war talk and the value of engagement to isolate Iran, Romney seeks to create political division with an attack on the Obama administration’s Iran policy that is as inaccurate as it is aggressive.

I join this debate because the nuclear issue with Iran is deadly serious business. It should invite sobriety and thoughtfulness, not sloganeering and sound bites. The stakes are far too high for it to become just another applause line on the stump. Idle talk of war only helps Iran by spooking the tight oil market and increasing the price of the Iranian crude that pays for its nuclear program.