Mitt Romney on stage at the Israeli-American Council conference. Photo: Shahar Azran.

JNS.org – Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney blasted his opponent in the 2012 race for “distancing” the U.S. from its allies.

“[President Barack Obama] is weakening our military and distancing us from our allies—which weakens us,” Romney said Friday in Washington, DC, at the inaugural conference of the Israeli-American Council (IAC).

The former Massachusetts governor said Obama “began by going into the Arab world and apologizing for America, and saying we were dictatorial, divisive—and that we were dismissive of other nations. And the remarkable thing is that he now is doing that very thing. But not to our enemies. To our friends.”

Romney also criticized Obama’s recently reported letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“That the president would write a letter of this nature, in effect legitimizing a nation and a leadership that is violating international norms and is threatening the world, is so far beyond the pale, I was stunned. I was speechless,” he said.

Founded in Los Angeles in 2007, the IAC started expanding nationally in 2013 and says its programming has reached more than 100,000 of the estimated 500,000-800,000 Israeli Americans this year. The organization—whose stated mission is “to build an active and giving Israeli-American community throughout the United States in order to strengthen the State of Israel, our next generation, and to provide a bridge to the Jewish-American community”—has offices in Boston, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.

“As individuals and as the Israeli-American community, you have a vision and you have values and you are organizing now to take action based on that vision and those values,” former Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman told the conference.