

Patrick Seale, a prominent British writer on Middle East affairs, published an article declaring that the administration "is beginning to adopt the vociferously pro-Israeli, anti-Arab rhetoric of its predecessor—the neocon-dominated administration of former President George W. Bush." He cited a speech last week by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she "used unusually strong language" to warn Syria and Iran that "America's commitment to Israel's security was unshakable."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak last week at an American Jewish Committee gala in Washington. European Pressphoto Agency



In a week when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is at the United Nations to talk at a nuclear nonproliferation conference—an ironic appearance given that most of the world worries he's seeking to proliferate—the level of security cooperation between Israel and the U.S. is of more than passing interest.



Actually, they're cooperating more than most people think. It's important to note that this cooperation isn't designed to facilitate an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Actually, it's more the opposite. By making Israel feel its has, on its own and in conjunction with the U.S., the defenses needed to either deter or defend against Iran, the Obama administration undoubtedly hopes to reduce Israel's inclination to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran, which the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, for one, has openly fretted might be ineffective and destabilizing.

Beyond that, making it clear that there is a robust American-Israeli security relationship is one way of preventing miscalculations by the Middle East's more dangerous characters.


That's one reason why both Secretary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have gone out of their way in the last two weeks to publicly restate America's commitment to Israeli security.

And in fact, officials from both countries say that military and security cooperation has weathered the political storms of recent months, and in some areas actually thrived. An advanced American radar system, for example, has been deployed to Israel's Negev Desert, whence it can help the burgeoning Israeli missile-defense network.




Last fall, for example, U.S. forces stopped and inspected a ship called the Hansa India, which was carrying shipping containers that originated in Iran and were headed for Syria. The ship later was detained in Malta, where, the American government asserts, it was found to be carrying tons of bullet casings.

None of this means there aren't real strains between Washington and Tel Aviv over settlements in the West Bank, or over the value of a robust Arab-Israeli peace process to the broad American effort to knit Arab states into a coalition opposing Iran. Nor does strategic cooperation now mean that there won't, at some point down the road, be a serious rupture between the U.S. and Israel over the wisdom of a military strike at Iran's nuclear facilities.

It simply means that, as in all matters Middle Eastern, the situation isn't entirely as it appears on the surface.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com