Over the past week, Hillary repeatedly said that she would nuke Iran if Iran nuked Israel. She also said that she would consider extending the US nuclear umbrella to protect other US allies in the Middle East as well. This is a rather large change in US nuclear policy. Apparently aware of this fact, senior members of Hillary’s staff tried three times yesterday to deny that Hillary said she would nuke Iran (Hillary literally said that the US would have “a nuclear response” to Iran – it doesn’t get any clearer than that) and they denied that she said we should extend our nuclear umbrella to protect other countries in the region (but she did, twice).

In an effort to determine just how a large a gaffe Hillary made, I decided to contact a national security expert. AJ, our former defense intelligence officer, is taking his law exams, so in the meantime, here’s the take of Dr. Jeffrey Lewis. Dr. Lewis is Director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation. He founded and maintains the leading blog on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, ArmsControlWonk.com. Here is Dr. Lewis’ take on Hillary’s, and her staff’s, comments on this issue: