Senior US Official: We Will Maintain ‘Unshakable’ Alliance with Israel After Iran Talks

An unnamed senior administration official stressed that the United States remains committed to its alliance with Israel despite differences in opinion over policy with regard to Iran in an interview Thursday in Jerusalem with Defense Media Activity, the Pentagon’s primary media outlet.

The official even went as far as to say that he understands why Israel remains deeply skeptical of the P5+1 negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and pledged that the U.S. will continue to back Israel long after the negotiations have ended. 

The unnamed official’s tone drew a sharp contrast from the comments usually heard from senior administration officials related to the Jewish state. President Obama, for example, has often openly questioned the motives of his counterpart, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has warned against dealing with the Ayatollah’s regime.

The administration official told Defense Media Activity that the U.S. and Israel have a “near identical” threat perspective when it comes to Iran. The official noted that Iran “is spreading ballistic missile technology, selling weapons in the region and operating throughout the region via surrogates and proxies,” the report said.

“The threat affects us differently because of our size and location, but we agree on the threat completely. We agree on the strategic objective completely, which is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” the official explained to the Pentagon media arm.

Israel and the United States will continue to tighten “security cooperation further” regardless of what kind of deal is struck with the Iranian dictatorship, he added.

Elaborating on how the “unshakeable” bond between the U.S. and Israel will continue, the official concluded:

“Still, it’s a sign of how close the relationship between the United States and Israel is, and how unshakeable — that even when we have an important disagreement on a serious subject and it’s become public, … all that bedrock joint security cooperation, all that people-to-people work, all the joint economic progress continues apace.”