Hillary Clinton at the Saban Forum. Photo: Screenshot.

Time – Midway through Barack Obama’s first term as president, U.S. officials grew alarmed that Israel might launch a unilateral air strike against Iran’s nuclear program. Iran had snubbed Obama’s outreach after the 2008 election, and rejected an October 2009 international proposal to ship most of its enriched uranium out of the country—stirring pessimism about prospects for a future breakthrough.

“Militarily, I thought we needed to prepare for a possible Israeli attack and Iranian retaliation,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates writes in his new memoir, Duty. At a January 2010 Oval Office meeting, Gates told Obama “he needed to consider the ramifications of a no-warning Israeli attack,” including whether the U.S. would assist Israel and how it would respond to Iranian retaliation.

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