Back in October 2008, on his way to securing American Jews as his single most sustained bloc of supporters, candidate Obama seemed quite explicit about the status of US loan guarantees to Israel. Quite explicit:

US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has promised not to cut foreign aid to Israel if he is elected in November, a spokeswoman for Obama has said. In a statement to the Israeli business daily Globes, a spokeswoman for Obama said he would honor existing agreements pertaining to foreign aid and as such was committed to 'increasing aid to Israel to $30 billion over 10 years.'

So a few months ago the Israelis went ahead and locked in 2010/11 loans without any peace process-related conditions. Unfortunately they forgot the part where all Obama promises come with an expiration date:

On the eve of his visit to the Middle East, US special envoy George Mitchell threatened that his country would freeze its aid to Israel if the Jewish state failed to advance peace talks with the Palestinians and a two-state solution. Mitchell clarified in an interview to the PBS network that the United States would use incentives or sanctions against both sides. According to American law, Mitchell said, the US can freeze its support for loan guarantees to Israel. He added that all options must remain open and that the sides must be convinced about what their important interests are.

Forget the part about how this White House seems committed to detonating the US/Israeli alliance, if only because that's not really newsworthy. More broadly - and here I'm shamelessly cribbing from Instapundit - if Obama was trying to wreck America as a superpower, what would he be doing differently? If he was deliberately working to erode US influence in the Middle East, would there be a better way than putting the US on a collision course with both of the region's most powerful countries? He's taking a softline approach with Iranian antagonists, which only emboldens them, and a hardline approach with Israeli allies, which only alienates them. Smart power!

Both Israel and Iran will respond by doing what countries do: pursuing their own interests. Like so many other world leaders are beginning to do, Israeli and Iranian pols will simply start ignoring Obama. It'll be bad for the United States to lose its influence in one of the most dangerous and energy-rich regions in the world. It would be disastrous for Israel to lose its most consistent and powerful international ally. But it's not like Israel doesn't have other options, some of which they've been neglecting precisely because of US pressure. Cf. Caroline Glick from this morning.

References and related after the jump...