Hillary Puts Israel Under the Umbrella

Appearing on ABC's This Week, Secretary of State Clinton said a nuclear attack on Israel would be treated as a nuclear attack against the U.S. It's hard to understand this policy, for a variety of reasons:

The principle reason behind the so-called nuclear umbrella was to both dissuade an adversary with a much greater nuclear arsenal (i.e. the Soviet Union) from attacking non-nuclear nations and, in so doing, to dampen the urge of non-nuclear states to seek nuclear weapons in self defense. The umbrella kept the Soviets at bay and the nuclear club elite.

Neither rationale applies to Israel. They are already a nuclear weapons state and their arsenal is, and will remain, orders of magnitude more destructive than any presumptive Iranian capability. Some argue that because Israel is small, any nuclear attack would incapacitate its ability to launch a counter-attack, thereby diminishing the credibility of Israel's nuclear deterrent. Such statements overlook the considerable investment Israel has made in insuring against precisely just such a scenario. Though the details of its nuclear force are understandably secret, Israel is reported to possess an arsenal of some 200 nuclear weapons, capable of being launched from land, air and sea (via three submarines).

The entire premise of extending this guarantee to Israel strikes me as somewhat illogical. If Iran is going to launch a nuclear weapon at Israel - then they are clearly suicidal and no amount of U.S. retaliation is going to matter. If they are not suicidal, then Israel posses a sufficient deterrent. Is there any scenario wherein 100-plus nuclear weapons landing on Iran is not enough?

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