talked about an israeli attack on iran, the key issue is how far away iran is. it s the very edge of israel s tactical ability for its air force to project any kind of force. this new deal would put iran right in the crosshairs of israel s air force. take a look at the map. tel aviv, tehran about 1,000 miles, and israel s planes and pilots would have to perform very tricky midair refueling over some rather unfriendly skies, either iraq or saudi arabia. from azerbaijan s capital just about 300 miles, and the air force bases are actually south of baku, even closer to iranian air space. now, the israelis have been courting azerbaijan as an ally over the past couple of years. just recently they signed a $1.6 billion arms deal. israel has 24 american-made f-15i striker eagles, and that s most likely the plane that would be used in the initial wave of attacks on iran here.
or so ago, defense secretary panetta said publicly he thought if israel attacked iran, it would be in the april, may, june period. and i think the reason he did that was that the obama administration s private effort to pressure israel not to attack iran were failing, and they had decided to go public. i think this leak today is part of the administration s campaign against an israeli attack. alisyn: in fact, you re not alone. there are reports today in israel news that, in fact, the u.s. is leaking this classified information in order to dissuade israel. so why is the u.s. doing that? i think the obama administration has long believed that an israeli attack was worse than an iranian nuclear weapon. the president says that containment and deterrence of iran is not his policy, and i think today that s true. but it s his plan b, it s his back-up plan when his current efforts at sanctions fail and diplomacy fails and iran gets
bases along its border with iran. if true, the israelis could strike iran s nuclear facilities without having to refuel, and that is a big change in israel s military situation. john bolton is the former u.s. ambassador to the u.n. and a fox news contributor. hello, mr. ambassador. hi, allison, glad to be here. alisyn: so if these new reports are correct that israel is now being granted access to azerbaijan, what does this mean? well, i think two things. one, substantively, obviously, israel can do the math and the geography, and if it can get positions closer to iran s nuclear targets to be able to attack them, that s so much the better from israel s point of view. israel knows how difficult, cramped a military attack would be, and it s not surprising if these reports are true and i m not commenting one way or the other whether they are but i think there s another point here beneath the substantive point, and that is that these reports come from american intelligence officials
nuclear weapons. and i think that the pressure that the administration has put on israel has been just merciless behind the scenes, but nonetheless, as i say, every evidence is that the pressure s failing, that the israeli government will do what they think is necessary. so the obama administration is has torqued it up a notch, and now they re going to reveal very sensitive, very important information that will allow iran to defeat an israeli attack. i think that s what s going on. alisyn: so if israel does take advantage of these azerbaijani airstrips or places they can launch from, what does that mean for the u.s.? well, i m not saying i have any knowledge about anything in azerbaijan, but what it means is that the likelihood of an israeli attack would be more successful. because the distances are shorter, they can have their planes over the target for longer periods of time, they have to worry less about aerial refueling. there are a whole host of
more statements about it. but among the other justices where we need the five, there was still some legitimate questions they were asking, and i think they re pondering it, and we really don t know how they re going to rule though we d like to believe that based on their questioning they would lean in favor of striking it doesn t because they found real questions with the whole idea of requiring somebody under the interstate commerce clause to buy a product or service for the first time in history and what that would mean going forward for other things, what precedent that would mean if genie s out of the bottle. chief jus roberts was justice roberts was concerned about that, and so was justice kennedy. but it remains to be seen, were we to prevail, it would be a 5-4 decision. if we re not to prevail, it may also be a 5-4 decision. alisyn: it ll be interesting to see what happens in june. bill mccollum, thank you for joining us. thank you. alisyn: israel now has a very