ArchPundit

Hillary wants some sort of common defense umbrella in the Middle East:

Clinton said it was vital that the United States create a new “security umbrella” to reassure Israel and its other allies in the region that they would not be threatened by Iran. She said she would tell them that “if you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States, and hopefully our NATO allies, would respond to that.”

If Obama said this, we’d be hearing how dangerous he was and, well, it would be true.

1)  Israel has the ability to deter anyone in the region with estimates of 200 – 400 nukes.   They even have them deployed on submarines.   If a nuclear attack were to be made upon Israel, Israel could largely wipe out any attacker or group of attackers in practical terms.

What’s bizarre is the infantilization of Israel by many who seem to forget that Israel is the strongest country in the region by an incredibly wide margin.  Israel has far better defense technology and some of the best trained troops in the world.   And a whole lot of nukes with multiple ways of delivering those nukes.

2) While the US has lost some of its ability to act as an honest broker in the Middle East, such a commitment would lead to the US having virtually no ability to facilitate peace negotiations.

3)  US intelligence suggests Iran is not actively seeking a bomb.  Apparently she continues to not read the intelligence reports.

4) It is far from clear that Iran is the most likely nation to attack Israel in the region.  Syria and Israel are facing increasing tension and competition for water that especially affects Syria.

It further diminishes the role of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which the US is essentially in violation of with both Israel and the new deal with India. The way to effectively deal with non-proliferation issues is to stress the international framework created to deal with that issue.  After the Bush administration has played cowboy and weakened NPT with the India nuclear tech transfers and other moves, a united world on the issue of NPT is vital to long term US security interests–not more saber-rattling.