President Obama secretly agreed to sell Israel 55 bunker-busting bombs, according to a Newsweek report.
Much has been made of Obama's tense relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The president pressured the Israelis to cease building settlements in the West Bank. And Obama has been accused by Republicans of being hostile to Israel's security concerns.
With the sale of deep-penetrating bombs called GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators, Obama is satisfying a weapons request Israel first made during the Bush administration.
Israel's request for bunker-busters in 2005 was denied. At the time, the Defense Department had frozen most military sales to Israel because of concerns Israel was transferring advanced military technology to China.
Pentagon officials apparently had a change of heart.
Here's what Newsweek's Eli Lake reports:
Even some of the hawks from the George W. Bush administration grudgingly give Obama credit for behind-the-scenes progress. "If you say to the White House, 'Obama has been very unfriendly to Israel,' they say, 'What do you mean? It's the best military-to-military relationship ever.' And that part is true," says Elliott Abrams, who oversaw Middle East policy at the National Security Council. "If you look at the trajectory from Clinton to Bush to Obama, the military relationship has gotten steadily stronger. I don't think Obama changed the trajectory, but he certainly didn't interfere with it, and it continued under him."
The bunker busters were a significant breakthrough. The Israelis first requested the sale in 2005, only to be rebuffed by the Bush administration. At the time, the Pentagon had frozen almost all U.S.-Israeli joint defense projects out of concern that Israel was transferring advanced military technology to China.
In 2007, Bush informed then prime minister Ehud Olmert that he would order the bunker busters for delivery in 2009 or 2010. The Israelis wanted them in 2007. Obama finally released the weapons in 2009, according to officials familiar with the secret decision.
James Cartwright, who served until August as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Newsweek the military chiefs had no objections to the sale. Rather, he said there was a concern about "how the Iranians would perceive it" and "how the Israelis might perceive it." In other words, would the sale be seen as a green light for Israel to attack Iran's secret nuclear sites one day?
See photos of: Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Olmert
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