Sunday, January 07, 2007

Israel to nuke Iran?

London Times:

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters," according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open "tunnels" into the targets. "Mini-nukes" would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.
Israel denies this, as you'd expect. Hopefully, we're only dealing with out-of-the-box diplomacy or psy-ops here.

It should be said, however, that this plan resonates with Sy Hersh's reporting on the American plans to use "bunker busters" against Iran, something which was allegedly shot down by the military brass. Perhaps the idea has been outsourced?

In any case, I trust that the richness of a country threatening to nuke another country for daring to develop its own nukes is not lost on readers.