WASHINGTON – Senator Clinton launched what became a bipartisan attack against Secretary of State Rice yesterday, criticizing America’s top diplomat for not responding forcefully enough to anti-Semitic comments by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Ahmadinejad drew harsh rebukes from Israel, America, and Europe on Wednesday for calling the Holocaust a “myth” and for suggesting that Israel be relocated to Europe, Canada, or Alaska. A spokesman for the State Department, Sean McCormack, called the comments “outrageous” and “certainly reprehensible.”

But Mrs. Clinton said she was not satisfied with the American response. In a letter to Ms. Rice yesterday, she said that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments were “beyond the pale of international discourse.” And citing ongoing negotiations on Iranian nuclear technology, Mrs. Clinton urged Ms. Rice to “place the United States in the forefront in delivering the strong, united, and unambiguous condemnation of the international community.”

Mrs. Clinton’s letter to Ms. Rice was immediately questioned by the State Department – and seized on by political analysts as another example of her ongoing effort to build conservative credibility on issues like national security. Those efforts will be further complicated by Mrs. Clinton’s decision yesterday to support a possible filibuster of the Patriot Act Reauthorization Bill.

“We have responded in condemning these comments,” a State Department spokesman, Edgar Vazquez, said. “I don’t know what she means by ‘forefront.’ What I am saying is that we and the rest of the international community are united in condemning the comments.”

In an interview Wednesday on the “Sean Hannity Show,” a popular conservative radio talk show, Ms. Rice called Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments “outrageous” and said he is further isolating the Iran from the international community.

“I can’t speculate on how this might all play out,” Ms. Rice said. “I think our goal has to be, as a civilized international community, to just condemn this and to take it as a warning about the Iranian regime and about its policies, and to make certain that they are not going to get a nuclear weapon.”

Told about Ms. Rice’s radio comments, Mrs. Clinton only sharpened her criticism against the State Department.

“In the off chance that the president of Iran doesn’t tune into Sean Hannity’s radio show, we’re urging the State to elevate its efforts to the highest levels of the department and make its position known in a venue more likely to attract international attention, and therefore garner the widest possible condemnation of Iran for these hateful and outrageous comments,” a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Phillipe Reines, wrote in an e-mail.

Republicans did not distance themselves from Mrs. Clinton’s letter to Ms. Rice. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, Senator Coleman of Minnesota, said through an aide that he agrees with it.

“He is in accord with the letter that Senator Clinton wrote,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Coleman, Andrea Wuebker, said. “He agrees that strong language is needed.”

Two other Republicans, Senator Santorum of Pennsylvania, and Senator Brownback of Kansas, drafted a resolution on Wednesday denouncing Mr. Ahmadinejad. It calls for the condemnation of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and supports efforts “to condemn the leaders of the government of Iran in all appropriate forms.”

Political analysts saw Mrs. Clinton’s letter as a winning political move aimed not only at solidifying her national security credentials but also scoring points against a potential rival. Democrats regard Mrs. Clinton as their top presidential contender in 2008, and some see Ms. Rice as a potential opponent. Neither woman has openly expressed an interest in running for the office.

“This letter is a twofer,” the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, Larry Sabato, said. “Conservatives hate Iran, but his statements were anti-Semitic. So you can please conservatives and Jews with the same statement and thwart a potential political opponent and the Bush administration at the same time. There’s no downside.”

A larger question for Middle East analysts was whether the American response to Mr. Ahmadinejad was indeed adequate.

“I think Hillary Clinton is, of course, being opportunistic with this letter,” the president of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney, said. “But unfortunately, I also think that the sad truth is that the State Department is not being assertive about how to deal with this unacceptable behavior. If this is really unacceptable, and I think it has to be, I think the president of the United States ought to be condemning it.”