Mideast: Quietly, the Obama administration has released details of Israel’s nuclear program through the Defense Department. It was no accident, and could have a devastating impact on the balance of power in the region.
The same administration that refused to divulge what’s in its soon-to-be-concluded nuclear “deal” with Iran, last month stealthily released a top-secret 1987 report on Israel’s nuclear program — information that might be used by Israel’s enemies.
The 386-page report “describes in detail the march of Israeli military and technological advancement in the 1970s and ’80s,” wrote journalist Michael Karpin on the Jewish Daily Forward’s blog site.
Karpin, author of the “The Bomb in the Basement — How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World,” says the U.S. report pays “particular attention to the development and progression of Israel’s nuclear infrastructure and research labs.”
The 27-year-old classified report further hints that Israel was developing a hydrogen bomb, with power a thousand times greater than a regular atomic bomb.
“It should be emphasized that in the history of the relations between the two countries,” wrote Karpin, “there is no other published official American document that mentions in any way the Israelis’ development of hydrogen bombs.” That’s how unusual this is.
Of course, Israel’s nuclear prowess is an open secret. But the details have heretofore been largely unknown — something that’s called “constructive ambiguity” in nuclear diplomacy. Keep your enemy guessing.
As such, Obama’s petulant move is clearly intended to weaken Israel and make it vulnerable. There is no other rational basis for doing this.
And, by the way, it’s only the latest in a series of childish attacks by Obama on Israel, America’s one true ally in the Mideast and the only country in the region to give all of its citizens full democratic and legal rights.
Ratcheting up the rhetoric, the administration just this week absurdly accused Israel of spying on talks with Iran so that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could better argue against the talks’ likely outcome — which is that Iran will eventually get a nuclear bomb.
Funny, we always thought that gathering information about what your enemy is up to isn’t called spying, but intelligence gathering. That’s what our own embassies do, routinely. Are they guilty of espionage too?
More seriously, by undercutting an ally that’s threatened with extermination by the far-larger Iran, Obama betrays not just Israel, but America’s own interests too.
Obama’s recent actions, sadly, confirm the great Mideast scholar Bernard Lewis’ dictum: “America is harmless as an enemy, (but) treacherous as a friend.”
Simply put, who will trust us after such behavior?
As for the president, we have to wonder: Is this mere incompetence or intentional?
