Um, what happened to that "no blank check" business?

The beginning of the week, I noted the statement of a former US ambassador to Israel to the effect that with the coming of the Obama administration, "the era of the blank check is over."

Apparently, that's true: The check isn't blank, it's filled in with B-52s. Haaretz (Israel) has the story:

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.

I suppose the end of the end of the blank check should be no surprise, since as Haaretz noted in a different article, before the election

[t]he Obama campaign denied that [Zbigniew] Brzezinski and other figures like Bill Clinton's former advisor Robert Malley with dovish positions on the Israel-Palestinian question were among his Middle East advisors.

Only hawks allowed in.

Now, it's important to note, as I have on other occasions regarding the transition, that this could be a trial balloon to test the public response or a strategic leak to promote a policy in internal discussions. But in either case, it still means that this is a live idea among Obama's advisers; even if it's not an agreed position, it is a topic of discussion or active dispute. In fact, since Hillary Clinton proposed exactly this idea during the primary campaign, that's it's up for serious consideration can't be reasonably doubted.

By the way and as a potential further indication of how checks are to be written, Clinton also proposed that this "umbrella" - what a touching image, nuclear war becomes like rain, kind of in the same way that autoworkers being expected to accept seeing their pay slashed by 20% or more is called giving them a "haircut" - she proposed extending that "umbrella"

to other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, if they agree to relinquish their own nuclear ambitions.

That condition is not one to be demanded of Israel.

First Footnote: Earlier this week, Obama said he was prepared to negotiate with Iran

and would offer economic incentives for Tehran to relinquish its nuclear program. He warned that if Iran refused the deal, he would act to intensify sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Translation: "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. But youse are gonna do what we says."

Second Footnote: The issue generated some unintentional humor from the White House, where

[a] senior Bush administration source said that the proposal for an American nuclear umbrella for Israel was ridiculous and lacked credibility. ... "[W]hat is the point of an American response, after Israel's cities are destroyed in an Iranian nuclear strike?"

Um, are you acknowledging that a cornerstone of the US's entire nuclear weapons strategy since World War II, the idea that an attack would meet a massive counterattack - that is, "deterrence," otherwise known as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) or the "balance of terror" - is "ridiculous and lack[s] credibility?"

Cool.