VP nominee says US must "make sure" that Teheran does not obtain weapons of mass destruction.
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, JPOST CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORKSarah Palin 224.88(photo credit: AP)
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin defended Israel's right to take whatever action is necessary against Iran, in her first major media interview, aired on ABC Thursday night.
"We are friends of Israel, and I don't think that we should second-guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves, and for their security," Palin said.
She reiterated the answer when asked twice more whether the US would be cooperative if Israel felt it needed to take out the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities.
When asked if a nuclear Iran was an existential threat to Israel she replied: "I believe that under the leadership of [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe."
When asked what the United States should do about a nuclear Iran, she answered: "We have got to make sure these weapons of mass destruction, that nuclear weapons, are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran."
Her comments were similar to those made by Democratic vice presidential candidate and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden during a conference call with the Jewish media last week.
"Israel has an absolute right to defend itself. It doesn't have to ask us," he responded to a question from The Jerusalem Post on how an Obama-Biden administration would view an Israel decision to take military action against Iran.
"It's not a question for us to tell Israel what they can and cannot do," he said.
On Friday, the National Jewish Democratic Council announced that Biden would be the keynote speaker at its conference in Washington later this month, which will address Jewish political issues and how to turn out the community's vote for the Democratic ticket.
During her ABC interview, which took place on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, Palin declared: "We are able to commit to 'never again.'"
She also echoed US President George W. Bush in saying that when it came to dealing with Islamic extremism, "They need to be provided the hope that all Americans have, instilled in us, because we're a democracy and we are a free, we're a free-thinking society."
At the same time, she seemed not to understand what her interviewer, Charlie Gibson, was referring to when he asked whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine.
He then described the doctrine as the right to preemptively strike any country the US thinks is planning to attack it, to which she replied, "If there is legitimate and enough intelligence and legitimate evidence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country."
Though Palin has a small Israeli flag in her office, she hasn't been to the Jewish state. In her interview, she listed Mexico, Canada, Kuwait and Germany - the latter part of visit with US troops - as the only countries she had visited, and acknowledged that she has never met a foreign head of state.
But she touted her foreign policy credentials stemming from her work in connection to energy issues in her two years as the governor of Alaska.
"I want you to not lose sight of the fact that energy is a foundation of national security," she told Gibson. "It's that important. It's that significant."
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