Are the presidential candidates actually going to have a debate about whether the threat posed by Iran is comparable to the previous threat posed by the USSR?

Republican John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama of inexperience and reckless judgment for saying Iran does not pose the same serious threat to the United States as the Soviet Union did in its day.

McCain made the attack Monday in Chicago, Obama’s home turf.

“Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess,” McCain said in an appearance at the restaurant industry’s annual meeting.

He was referring to comments Obama made Sunday in Pendleton, Ore.: “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela – these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet 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.’”

A video clip of Obama making the comments was distributed Monday by McCain’s campaign.

McCain listed the dangers he sees from Iran: It provides deadly explosive devices used to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq, sponsors terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and is committed to the destruction of Israel.

“The threat the government of Iran poses is anything but tiny,” McCain said.

This strikes me as a classic Washington gaffe. What Obama said is indisputably true — Iran does not “pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us” — but McCain is using Obama’s comments to suggest that the presumptive Democratic nominee doesn’t take the Iranian threat seriously.

Note also how McCain falsely implies that Obama said that the threat posed by Iran is “tiny” (he actually said Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela “are tiny compared to the Soviet Union”). This is similar to the way McCain distorted an Obama joke about Hillary Clinton to suggest that Obama thinks people hunt ducks with revolvers (as documented by Jonathan Chait). Not exactly straight talk, is it?