Hillary Clinton said that as president she would be willing to use nuclear weapons to “obliterate” Iran if that nation launched a nuclear attack on Israel.
Clinton would warn Iran’s leaders that “their use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States,” Clinton said in an interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Monday.
On the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, the Democratic presidential hopeful said American allies in the Middle East were being “intimidated and bullied into submission by Iran.” And she asserted that the U.S. must create a new “security umbrella” to reassure Israel and other allies that they would not be threatened by Iran.
She said she would assure those allies that “if you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States, and hopefully our NATO allies, would respond to that.”
Clinton echoed those remarks in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, saying: “In the next 10 years, during which [the Iranians] might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.
“That’s a terrible thing to say but … that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.”
In the Democratic presidential debate last week, Clinton vowed that an Iranian attack on Israel would bring “massive retaliation,” without specifying the use of nuclear weapons.
Hillary’s Democratic opponent Barack Obama has refused to rule out any options if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, according to MSNBC, but he has not said he would be willing to use nuclear weapons.
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