Is Israel most important strategic US ally in the region?

Listening to US President Barack Obama’s Sept. 10 speech to the nation about the military campaign against the Islamic State (IS), it was hard not to recall the declaration of war by President George H.W. Bush against Iraq's former leader Saddam Hussein. In the first Gulf War, just as today, the US administration enlisted a group of Western and Arab states to form an international and regional coalition. Then, too, the coalition faced a common enemy that sent violent tentacles from Iraq into its surroundings, near and far. What’s more, 23 years ago, Israel was left out of the military arena. The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir responded to Bush’s pleas and reined in his government colleagues, who demanded a forceful Israeli response to the barrage of rockets fired from Iraq into the heart of Israel.

Today, too, while IS is advancing toward its borders, Israel, the closest US ally, is looking on from the sidelines as the superpower and its partners take action. Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel both bypassed Jerusalem in their recent trips to the region. Once again it’s time to ask whether Israel is, in fact, the most important strategic US asset in the region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a leading advocate of this thesis, was forced to console himself with the front-page headline of his home-team newspaper, Yisrael Hayom, which quoted an anonymous “Western diplomat” as telling Reuters that Israel had provided the coalition with intelligence information and satellite photos.