US promises on Iran receding into the distance

In the past, US leaders, including the Obama administrations and Obama himself, had insisted that the United States would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Now it is clear that the United States has no plan to stop Iranian nuclear development, but instead would provide "protection." As reported in Ha'aretz:

A key minister in the Israeli government criticized U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement on Tuesday that Washington would provide "a defense umbrella" for its allies in the Middle East in the event that Iran develops nuclear weapons.

 

Dan Meridor, Israel's minister for secret services, told Army Radio that the comments imply a willingness to reconcile with the eventuality of a nuclear-armed Iran.

 

"I heard, unenthusiastically, the Americans' statement that they will defend their allies in the event that Iran arms itself with an atomic bomb, as if they have already reconciled with this possibility, and this is a mistake," Meridor told Army Radio. "Now, we don't need to deal with the assumption that Iran will attain nuclear weapons but to prevent this."
 
Clinton said on Tuesday that the U.S. has a plan to prevent Iranian domination in the Middle East if it gets the nuclear bomb.

 

"We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment: that if the United States extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to develop the military capacity of those (allies) in the Gulf, it is unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer," Clinton said during a visit to Bangkok.

 

Of course, this would put every state in the Middle East in the unenviable position of Taiwan and Japan, which must rely on the US to protect them from nuclear China, and more recently, from nuclear North Korea. Nuclear deterrence has worked until now, but Iran with a bomb would not be like USSR or China with a bomb. Who believes that an Iranian attack on Israel would necessarily result in US retaliation? It might, or it might not. They are promising, but they also primised that Iran would never get the bomb.

 

Ami Isseroff