U.S. President-elect Barack Obama plans to offer Israel a strategic pact designed to fend off any nuclear attack on the Jewish state by Iran, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday.
Haaretz, quoting an unnamed U.S. source close to Obama, said Obama's administration would pledge under the proposed "nuclear umbrella" to respond to any Iranian nuclear strike against Israel with a U.S. retaliation in kind. There was no immediate comment on the Haaretz report from Israeli officials or the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.
Iran denies its nuclear program has military designs. But virulent anti-Israel rhetoric from Tehran has spread fears that the Israelis, who are believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, could attack their arch-foe pre-emptively, reported Reuters.
Cold War pacts -- NATO in Europe, the nuclear umbrella over Japan -- defended U.S. allies while obliging them to get Washington's nod for military moves.
Speculation on the possibility of a U.S.-Israeli strategic pact was stirred two years ago, when President George W. Bush said in an interview with Reuters that his country would "rise to Israel's defense" in the face of Iranian threats.
Israel was founded partly as a haven for survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, on the promise that Jews would now look to their own defense. Formally submitting to foreign protection could spell a major credibility crisis for the Israeli government.