WASHINGTON — Two days after John McCain told a leading pro-Israel lobby that he would toughen sanctions against Iran, Barack Obama assured the same group of his commitment to protect Israel against the Iranian threat.
"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told thousands of members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington.
"Let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel," he said.
Addressing AIPAC -- long considered one of Washington's most influential lobbies -- has become almost a requirement for presidential candidates seeking the Jewish vote. But there was an added imperative for Obama, who has battled accusations that he is overly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and too willing to negotiate with Iran's controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, has made the latter charge a centerpiece of his critique of Obama's qualifications to be president.
On Wednesday, Obama gave a full-throated defense of his plan to engage Iran more directly, arguing that the Bush administration's policies have destabilized the Middle East and jeopardized U.S. and Israeli security.
"There are those who would continue and intensify this failed status quo, ignoring eight years of accumulated evidence that our foreign policy is dangerously flawed," Obama said, taking a swipe at his Republican rival.
"I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing -- if, and only if, it can advance the interests of the United States," he continued. "Only recently have some come to think that diplomacy by definition cannot be tough. They forget the example of Truman and Kennedy and Reagan. These presidents understood that diplomacy backed by real leverage was a fundamental tool of statecraft."
Obama drew frequent and sustained applause for such comments, but it was his repeated proclamations of support for Israel that evoked the biggest ovations. He cited his own youthful search for his roots to explain his admiration for the Jewish state, and he recalled that his great-uncle was among the U.S. soldiers who liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany in 1945.
