Obama tells Katie Couric he “will not speculate” in response to a question about an Israeli strike on Iran.

Actually, she asked a relatively simple question, “how likely do you think a preemptive military strike by Israel against Iran may be?” Obama says he won’t “hypothesize on that.”

I suppose it would have been fair for Obama to say, that’s a question that’s more appropriate for the Israelis.

But in the follow-up, Obama says Israel’s strike on the Syrian site last year was appropriate.

I remember Hillary Clinton using the same line during the Democratic primary. The objection from then fits now — candidates who want the voters to consider the hypothetical scenario of them being commander-in-chief should not refuse to answer any question about hypothetical scenarios.

Rightly or wrongly, many Middle East observers think an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear targets is a possibility, maybe even a probability. It would be nice if a candidate who wanted to be president could take us through his thinking if something like that happened on his watch. Instead, we get another touting of “tough diplomacy.”