Wow: Bush Plans Tactical-Nuke Strike On Iran's Nuke Facilities?

Caveats: 1, it's reported by all-around douchebag Seymour Hersh, and 2, the fact that there's a "plan" to do something doesn't mean there's an intention. We have "plans," somewhere, either already approved and reviewed or being drawn up at any time to deal with any situation, with any sort of weapons. There's a "plan" to invade England somewhere floating around the Pentagon, if they don't stop making Mr. Bean movies.

But I'm glad that someone in the DoD is getting serious:

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts.

President George W Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler", says Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

Some US military chiefs have unsuccessfully urged the White House to drop the nuclear option from its war plans, Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine. The conviction that Mr Ahmedinejad would attack Israel or US forces in the Middle East, if Iran obtains atomic weapons, is what drives American planning for the destruction of Teheran's nuclear programme.

Hersh claims that one of the plans, presented to the White House by the Pentagon, entails the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One alleged target is Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, 200 miles south of Teheran.

Although Iran claims that its nuclear programme is peaceful, US and European intelligence agencies are certain that Teheran is trying to develop atomic weapons. In contrast to the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there are no disagreements within Western intelligence about Iran's plans.

This newspaper disclosed recently that senior Pentagon strategists are updating plans to strike Iran's nuclear sites with long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched missiles. And last week, the Sunday Telegraph reported a secret meeting at the Ministry of Defence where military chiefs and officials from Downing Street and the Foreign Office discussed the consequences of an American-led attack on Iran, and Britain's role in any such action.

The military option is opposed by London and other European capitals. But there are growing fears in No 10 and the Foreign Office that the British-led push for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear stand-off, will be swept aside by hawks in Washington. Hersh says that within the Bush administration, there are concerns that even a pummelling by conventional strikes, may not sufficiently damage Iran's buried nuclear plants.

When an unthinkable horror threatens, an unthinkable response suddenly becomes a lot more thinkable.

Much Too Late For Goodbyes? Thanks to Allah, via LGF: Soviet/Ukranian nukes may already have been sold to Iran. Up to 250 of them are unaccounted for.

posted by Ace at 09:41 PM

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