While sparring over an array of issues, Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan converged on the critical importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship to American interests and on the need to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The candidates’ stances, while differing sometimes sharply in claims and analyses, reflecting a broad bipartisan consensus in the American policy community and beyond. Earlier this week the Bipartisan Policy Center published a report emphasizing that letting Iran acquire nuclear weapons capability would trigger a global spike in oil prices that would negatively impact the U.S. economy. Crucially, these impacts would occur in an environment where Iran had acquired only the capability to make a nuclear weapon, short of a decision by the Iranians to actually build a weapon. The report’s analysis is in line with the “red line” drawn by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at the United Nations last month, in which the prime minister called for the international community to prevent Iran from acquiring even the capability to build a nuclear weapon.

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