Iranian navy speed boats take part in a drill in the sea off Oman, on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011. Iran's navy chief has reiterated for a second time in less than a week that his country can easily close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the passageway through which a sixth of the world's oil flows. (AP Photo/IIPA, Ali Mohammadi)

(CNSNews.com) – Ten days of naval war games, missile tests, claims of progress in its nuclear program and repeated threats to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz have pushed Iran far up the agenda for Republican presidential hopefuls on the eve of Tuesday’s caucus in Iowa.

Whether leading or trailing in the latest Iowa polls, several of the candidates – with the by now predictable exception of Rep. Ron Paul – have made common cause about the perceived threat posed by Iran, questioning President Obama’s policies and proposing a range of responses.

The latest to do so was Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who told CBS television Monday that as president she would deploy ballistic missiles and missile defense systems both in the United States and in the Middle East, to “send a very strong signal that the United States is on high alert and we will do whatever it takes.”

Bachmann, who obtained seven percent in the Des Moines Register’s last poll before the caucus, was responding to a question about Iran’s claim to have created its first homemade nuclear fuel rod – a sealed tube of nuclear fuel used in the core of a reactor – amid ongoing missile tests during a major naval exercise.

The head of Iran’s navy said the successful test-firing of surface-to-surface missiles demonstrated Tehran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important – and vulnerable – energy chokepoint.

“If they do have a nuclear fuel rod, this could mean potentially within a year, that they will have a nuclear weapon,” Bachmann said. “And they just demonstrated with their test launch, a missile delivery system that they have the capacity to have delivery of a nuclear weapon. This is very serious.”

She predicted that Iran “is going to be one of the largest issues of this campaign.”

Interviewed on NBC television on Sunday, former Sen. Rick Santorum offered his answer to Iran’s belligerence:  fund the “pro-democracy movement,” use covert activity to disrupt the nuclear program – and make sure Iran knows its origin – warn foreign scientists working on Iran’s nuclear program that they would be treated as enemy combatants, and work openly with Israel.

“I would be saying to the Iranians, you open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors, or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes – and make it very public that we are doing that.”

Santorum, in third place with 15 percent in the Des Moines Register poll, criticized Obama for not supporting the Iranian opposition, contrasting the president’s stance to the one taken by his predecessor, which the former senator said he had pushed as author of the Iran Freedom Support Act.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, leading the Iowa poll with 24 percent, has focused his Iran comments on criticizing Obama’s approach to the Iran challenge.

“Iran continues to be, and is actually, a greater threat than when he became president,” Romney said on Monday.

“I want to make sure that the people of this nation understand that he failed us, not only here at home, he’s failed us in dealing with the greatest threat we face, which comes from Iran,” he said a day earlier.

The consistent exception among the GOP field is Paul, whose views on Iran have been attacked by critics as overly-accommodating to the regime. The libertarian lawmaker from Texas, who is running just two points behind Romney in the Register poll, opposes sanctions and has repeatedly said it was understandable that Iran would want to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

Several of his rivals have attacked Paul’s views on Iran during various stages of the campaign.

At the weekend, former house speaker Newt Gingrich (12 percent in the Register poll) took aim at Paul, suggesting he was not worried enough about the threat posed by Iran and its potential nuclear capabilities. Gingrich has called for robust steps to bring down the regime in Tehran including severing its gasoline supply.

“You don’t have to vote for a candidate who will allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, because America will be next,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry (11 percent in the poll) said while campaigning last week, also targeting Paul. “I'm here to say, you have a choice.”

Huntsman (lagging at two percent in the Register poll) has not prioritized Iran in recent days, although during a foreign policy debate in New Hampshire in mid-December he did describe Iran and its nuclear activities as “the transcendent issue of this decade,” adding that “the mullahs in Tehran need to know that all options are on the table, and that there is zero ambiguity in terms of what we are prepared to do.”

A new Huntsman campaign ad targeting Paul also includes a clip in which Paul seems to express an understanding for Iran’s desire for a nuclear weapons capability.

Given that the U.S., Israel, China and others have nuclear weapons, Paul says in the clip – taken from a debate in Iowa last August – “why wouldn’t it be natural that they [the Iranians] might want a weapon? Internationally they’d be given more respect.”