Time Magazine has the article Hillary Clinton Discussed U.S. Approval of an Israeli Strike On Iran.
Around the same time, senior officials met to discuss ways the U.S. might dissuade Israeli Prime Minister from taking unilateral action. In one such meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised a bracing question, according to two former Obama administration officials: Was it possible that, instead of trying to restrain Israel, the U.S. should instead provide what one of those official described as “a tacit green light to the Israelis to take care of the problem for us”? In other words, instead of begging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give diplomacy more time, perhaps it was worth telling him to go proceed with airstrikes.
Clinton did not actually endorse the idea. She only raised the notion “as one option to consider,” according to one former official, who adds that it gained no traction inside the administration. Clinton’s current press secretary, Nick Merrill, did not respond to requests for comment this week on this matter.
While the very idea of a U.S.-approved Israeli strike on Iran is dramatic, Clinton’s thought experiment was actually responsible act of bureaucratic deliberation, says Kenneth Pollack, a former White House national security aide under Bill Clinton and author of a recent book on Iran
Some people commenting on the article seem to be thinking that this piece boosts Hillary’s image. To me, it just seems to confirm what I have suspected of Hillary all along. Obama’s foreign policy is much more warlike than I would have expected from his campaign. I always wondered if he was driving it in this direction or Hillary was.
When are we going to see articles about how much more successful our diplomacy seems to have gotten since John Kerry took over?
I wouldn’t so much say that the Iranians reacted poorly to the initial Obama administration offerings. i would think they were really reacting to the sucker punches we delivered at the same time we were delivering messages of friendship.
Our Republicans and some Democrats are trying to deliver the usual sucker punch now while we seem to be succeeding with Iran. Iran is reacting with great forbearance to continue diplomacy despite such moves by us.