You have to admire the macho instincts of Hillary Clinton. Asked on the day of the Pennsylvania primary what she would do if Iran made a nuclear attack on Israel, she replied: “If I’m the president, we will attack Iran... we would be able to totally obliterate them.” And it’s perfectly true. The United States of America has enough nuclear weapons to blast, irradiate, incinerate and obliterate all 75 million people in Iran many times over.

First, she has to win the presidential election of course, but American voters can rest easy in the knowledge that Clinton would not hesitate to kill tens of millions of people on behalf of their friends in Israel. What a contrast with wimpy Barack Obama, who said: “Using words like ‘obliterate’ — it doesn’t actually produce good results.”

Tedious purists will point out that Iran doesn’t actually have any nuclear weapons. Indeed, late last year, US intelligence agencies produced a joint National Intelligence Estimate stating that Iran has not even been working to develop nuclear weapons for the past four years.

Critics might also point out that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons of its own, and is perfectly capable of obliterating Iran without American help. But practical politicians like Clinton know that there is always some political mileage to be gained by promising to help Israel, whether it needs help or not.

On the very same day, by coincidence, another American was revealed to be in the business of helping Israel. His name is Ben-Ami Kadish, and he appeared in a New York courtroom charged with spying on the US for Israel.

Double jeopardy

Kadish, who worked in the US army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Centre in New Jersey from 1979 to 1985, allegedly gave secrets involving information about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles to Israel in the Eighties. At 84 years of age, he is long retired, but is still in touch with Israeli diplomats. When he realized that he was going to be arrested, he apparently called his current Israeli handler and was instructed: “Don’t say anything.... You don’t remember anything.” Nor is this the first time that an American citizen has been publicly accused by the US government of spying for Israel.

In the most prominent case, Jonathan Jay Pollard was convicted in 1987 of passing thousands of secret documents to Israeli agents while working in the US defence department. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and Israeli governments have since been trying to secure his release. He was granted Israeli citizenship in 1998.

State department spokesman, Tom Casey, was asked what Washington was going to do about the Kadish case. He said that Israel would be informed of his arrest. But there will be no diplomats expelled, none of the dramatics that you would see if the US government caught some American spying for the Russians or Chinese.

There is a curious asymmetry in the US-Israeli relationship. Israel is the sole beneficiary of this alliance — indeed, the US pays a significant price for it in terms of its relations with other Middle Eastern countries — and yet Israel can spy on the US with impunity.

During the Cold War, Israel was a valuable strategic ally for the US, but that ended 20 years ago. It is no longer so, but a brilliantly successful Israeli public relations campaign has persuaded the American public otherwise. So much so that Israel can brazenly spy on the US and suffer no political penalty. Hillary Clinton knows that threatening mass slaughter in defence of Israel (which does not need to be defended) is a vote-winner in the current political environment in the US. Barack Obama obviously knows it, but although he is not going to commit political suicide by saying it out loud, at least he refused to echo her blood-curdling threat.