In perhaps its most hostile act towards Israel yet, the Obama administration in February declassified a document containing details of Israel’s nuclear program.
Let that sink in: an ally in a dangerous part of the world gives the U.S. secret information on its defense capability, and the U.S. declassifies that document and reveals to the world the heretofore unknown information about that ally’s ability to defend itself. I'll bet that the mullahs in Iran, who have vowed to obliterate Israel from the face of the earth, found it interesting reading.
The Weekly Standard describes what happened:
In the declassified document, the Pentagon reveals supposed details about Israel’s deterrence capabilities, but it kept sections on France, Germany, and Italy classified. Those sections are blacked out in the document.
The Standard goes on:
Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons. To do so might spark a regional nuclear arms race, and eventual nuclear confrontation.
The declassification is a serious breach of decades’ old understandings concerning this issue between Israel and its north American and certain European allies.
The president used to like to brag to Israel that, “We’ve got your back.” More accurately, under President Obama, we have knifed Israel in the back. Israel isn’t the only ally we have treated shamefully, but revealing an ally's defense secrets, making it more difficult for that ally to defend itself, is truly shocking.
This is just the latest slap at Israel from the Obama administration, which is set on transforming the Middle East in a way that could make Iran, a long time enemy of the U.S. and supporter of terrorism, paramount in the region. As Jonathan Tobin notes:
After six years of sniping at and blaming Israel for the lack of progress in the peace process while absolving the Palestinians for refusing to negotiate in good faith, President Obama’s pique at Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reelection is such that the alliance between the two democracies is in crisis.
At the same time, the administration has not hesitated as it recklessly pursued détente with Iran in nuclear talks that appear on track to allow the Islamist regime to become a threshold nuclear power and perhaps to get a bomb either by cheating or even by abiding by a perilously weak deal.
This betrayal of Israel has gotten far less attention than the Democratic outrage over a letter to the Iranian mullahs from forty-seven GOP senators. The latest on this is that Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan, introduced an amendment that would make it impossible for senators to do anything similar in the future.
The amendment would defund "the purchase of stationary or electronic devices for the purpose of members of Congress or congressional staff communicating with foreign governments and undermining the role of the President as Head of State in international nuclear negotiations on behalf of the United States,” according to the Huffington Post. Talking Points Memo calls this “fantastic.”
Whatever you think about the letter to the mullahs, it pales by comparison with the betrayal of an ally's defense secrets.