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WASHINGTON (CNN) - Iran's crackdown on protests after its disputed presidential election has "shifted" its prospects for direct talks with the United States, but they remain on the table, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday.

The Obama administration has held open its offer of talks with Iran, which has not had diplomatic relations with Washington since 1980, despite the clampdown on protesters in Tehran and other cities. Clinton said that offer remains the "best vehicle" for engaging Tehran - but as President Barack Obama did last week, she warned that it "will not remain indefinitely."

"Neither the president nor I have any illusions that dialogue with the Islamic Republic will guarantee success of any kind, and the prospects have certainly shifted in the weeks following the election," Clinton told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"But we also understand the importance of offering to engage Iran and giving its leaders a clear choice - whether to join the international community as a responsible member or to continue down a path to further isolation," she added. "Direct talks provide the best vehicle for presenting and explaining that choice."

Iran has refused international calls to suspend its production of enriched uranium, which it insists will be used to fuel civilian nuclear power plants. Clinton said Iran has the right to a peaceful nuclear program "if it re-establishes the confidence of the international community" that its nuclear technology will not be put to military use.

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Romney will deliver a speech focused on missile defense on Monday.'

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Mitt Romney, eyeing a run at the presidency in 2012, is taking another step in fleshing out his foreign policy portfolio with a Monday speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation on the topic of defense spending.

According to excerpts of the speech provided to CNN, Romney will call the Obama administration's plan to trim more than $1 billion from missile defense programs a "grave miscalculation" that will put America at risk, especially given North Korea's nuclear provocations.

Romney says that Obama should push for "comprehensive, regime-crippling sanctions" against North Korea and "immediately reverse his recent decisions and strongly support completing our ballistic missile defense system."

In the speech, entitled "The Care of Freedom," Romney will also call on the administration to increase the modernization budget by $50 billion per year and to lock in total defense budgets at no less than four percent of GDP. But the military budget has been endangered, Romney argues, by the administration's domestic spending programs.

"Over the last few months, it has passed measures that will add almost $4 trillion to the national debt in the short term and then over $3 trillion over the next ten years," Romney will say. "None of that money was spent on increasing the defense modernization budget - a failure that history will never understand or excuse."

The former Massachusetts governor is urging pro-defense members of Congress to hold firm against further cuts. He plans to say that "depleting the defense budget to fund new social programs, particularly in the face of global turmoil, would put America and Americans at risk."

"At the most fundamental level, our military might depends on the long term strength of our economy," he will say, according to the excerpts. "The President's planned budgets and multi-trillion dollar deficits, financed by a level of borrowing never before attempted by any nation, puts our whole economy in jeopardy."
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Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that Israel should halt its settlement activity.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - On the eve of President Obama's meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that the Obama administration wants a complete halt to settlement activity by Israel, which she argued would help Washington's Mideast peace efforts.

"We think it is in the best interest of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion cease," she said following a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Ali Aboul Gheit.

Clinton spoke hours before having dinner with Abbas, who will meet with President Obama at the White House Thursday.

Last week President Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, where he pressed him to commit to the creation of a Palestinian state and halt settlement activity to create a better atmosphere for peace talks.

Netanyahu has committed to removing illegal settlement "outposts," but has pledged to continue expansion, or "natural growth"of existing settlements.

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DEERFIELD BEACH, Florida (CNN) – Joe Biden gave a fiery speech designed to reassure Jewish voters of Barack Obama’s support of Israel.

“I give you my word as a Biden, I would not have given up (my) job to be Barack Obama's vice president if I didn't in my gut and in my heart and in my head know that Barack Obama is exactly where I am on Israel,” he said.

On an earlier trip to Boca Raton, Florida, Obama himself confronted Internet rumors that he is Muslim and anti-Israel. Obama is a Christian.

“I want to just repeat this because I know that there’s a lot of rumor mongering going around. People have been getting e-mails non-stop,” Obama told a crowd at a synagogue in May.

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