It was bad timing for Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum, who this week misquoted President Obama's stance on Iran just as the administration announced how it plans to enforce its sanctions against that country.

The announcement included how the U.S. would determine if another country has "significantly reduced" oil purchases from Iran.

"We are working intensively to implement the (National Defense Authorization Act's) financial sanctions as part of our broad-based efforts to stop Iran's illicit nuclear activities," David Cohen, U.S. Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.

"We urge banks worldwide to quickly terminate their ties to the Central Bank of Iran, both to protect themselves from CBI's illicit financial activities and to isolate the CBI from the international financial system," he said.

As these headlines were poised to break across the country, Santorum dusted off an old McCain ad idea as the lead for an entire page for his campaign website titled, "Rick Santorum's Response To Iran," which was posted Feb. 11. Santorum asserted, "President Barack Obama naively and cavalierly once declared Iran as a 'tiny country' that did not pose a serious threat," implying that Obama does not take Iran's nuclear threat seriously. Senator John McCain used the same argument against the then-candidate Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential election ad campaign.

"Santorum's Response To Iran" page plays with words to suggest Obama isn't experienced enough to handle Iran. But history and the headlines indicate Santorum's got it wrong.

In fact, the "tiny country" comment was derived from a speech Obama made in Pendelton, Ore., while still on the campaign trail on May 18, 2008, in which he compared how America must treat the threats from Iran, Venezuela and Cuba as tiny compared to the former Soviet Union.

When the Soviet Union presented a serious threat, "we were willing to talk [to the Soviet Union] at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet," Obama said, "and ultimately that direct engagement led to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war, and over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall. Now, that has to be the kind of approach that we take."

Obama went on to say, "You know, Iran, they spend one-one hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance. And we should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen. That doesn't mean we agree with them on everything. We might not compromise on any issues, but at least we should find out other areas of potential common interest, and we can reduce some of the tensions that have caused us so many problems around the world."

Rather than dismiss those countries as nonthreatening, Obama urged direct talks to reduce tensions. He had expressed this idea of strength and diplomacy many times during his campaign. And it brought a lot of heat on him from the right.