Obama slams Iran war rhetoric

US President Barack Obama has called on his Republican rivals to end “casual” talk on the possible war with Iran, the U.S. media said on Wednesday. Though the president did not mention anyone by name, the comments came shortly after presidential hopeful Mitt Romney ridiculed negotiations with Iran by saying that “hope is not a foreign policy." Obama slammed Republicans for "big talk" and "bluster" and their failure to take costs of war into account. “If some of these folks think that it's time to launch a war, they should say so and explain to the American people why they would do that and what the consequences would be. Everything else is just talk,” the U.S. president said at his first solo news conference since last November. “Those folks [Republican candidates] don’t have the responsibility. They aren’t the commander in chief. … And when I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I'm reminded of the costs involved in war,” he said. “This is not a game.” Obama added that there was still a “window of opportunity” to solve the Iranian problem by diplomatic means. "This notion that somehow we have a choice to make in the next week or two weeks or month or two months is not borne out by the facts. At this stage it is my belief that we have a window of opportunity that this still can be resolved diplomatically,” Obama said, adding that the U.S. would “continue to apply pressure, even as we give Iran a door to walk through to rejoin the national community.”