Ah yes, it is a problem if a language is not clear about the lifetime semantics of a loop variable.

In Ruby, for example, an idiomatic loop like 10.times{|i| ... } does indeed bind a new variable for every iteration, but that is implicitly clear to anyone with a basic understanding of the language. Likewise, the 3-part for loop of Java et al does not hide the fact that it's the same variable every time through the loop.

The Java for-each loop, on the other hand, is more ambiguous. A quick check seems to indicate that the iterator variable can be declared final and captured in an anonymous inner class. That means that for-each acts differently than for loop and I could see that confusing your average code monkey.