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.
“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.
I assume this is Israel’s way of holding a gun to our head to make us attack Iran so they won’t have to.
though you will never read it in the paper ever. I assume Israel is willing to take the world’s heat for this. I assume 20,000 extra troops in Iraq, the Stennis, the Eisenhower, Boxer strike force sitting in the Persian Gulf is our attempt at damage control since it isn’t considered by naval experts to be exactly what the doctor would order if we were going to hit Iran and we all know Bush wants to hit Iran more than he wants to have sex with Laura ever again. I assume the low yield nuclear bunker busters come from our arsenal and were shipped to Israel under cover of shipping them bombs during their little war with Lebanon.
Jesus Fucking Christ!
We should be talking to Iran before things spin out of control. I feel like we are in a nuclear version of the run-up to WWI where all the rhetoric is taken far too seriously and no one in any position of authority is thinking seriously about how horrendous the consequences of nuclear warfare (mini-nukes my ass) would be for the world.
last year and the exact same weapons. They just had to find someone else to pull it off. All of this is nothing new and I don’t think these are Israels bombs, I think they came from us…..I think we are the only ones on the globe with these things right now.
Probably right. One wonders if Cheney told the Saudis this when they called him on the carpet recently about our support for Iraq’s shi’ites.
Ours, theirs…what difference does it make? If they’re manufactured by us, which most of their weapons are, does it somehow absolve Israel of anything? That’s the thinking I see behind your multiple comments making sure that everyone knows that these weapons are ours. What difference does it make? The dead Iranians that will be on the recieving end if these things are dropped know the score. U.S./Israel…one in the same. Like the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng. Problem is, both suffer the consequences of the one. One dies…both die. And thats the gun that Israel is holding to our head. They have new surgeries these days to remove parasitic growths. We need to schedule one.
other than “holding America’s feet to the fire”. These bombs are brand spanking new and if they have them we just gave them to them to do this with. I don’t know how many dead Iranians there will be, these things were designed not kill civilians or disperse radiation above ground….not saying that those things won’t happen but the goal is that they won’t. This a joint Bush/Cheney/Israel operation though and trying to make surgical hits I’m assuming is supposed to keep things as calm as possible concerning collateral damage and pissed off people.
you read it here first posted yesterday evening.
and really I’ve to think on the header – “Times of London Issues Threat for Israel”
that’s my guess too… pressure on the Dem Congress
It still strikes me that only 2 carrier groups is not enough to launch an attack on Iran. What worries me is shrub’s inability to deal with reality.
It’s enough if you paln to go nuclear.
Plus I’m betting they have subs with cruise missiles and other tactical missiles in the region that we may not know about. In addition under their global strike plan, they can deply B2 bombers from bases in Diego Garcia, Britain and even I believe based in the US for strikes against Iran.
Here are some links about it:
LINK
LINK
LINK
I have no idea what’s going on, Steven D… but from talking with my Navy pal… let’s just say that – even with the subs and the Air Force and all that – the Navy will not want to allow just 2 of their carriers to be that exposed… it seems to be that typically, they prefer having 4 or 5 carrier groups prior to an planned attack… it’s not that we don’t have the fire power (with just the 2 carriers groups and assorted others) to really put a knock on Iran, but the subs aren’t going to protect a carrier group from enemy aircraft and the Air Force won’t protect the Navy…
I have to admit, the attack Iran rumors have ebbed and flowed for more than a year – right now is the first time I’ve taken any of it seriously, but only because I really think Shrub has slipped his noodle…
Hat tip to idredit, who posted this yesterday (it’s still in the recommended list.)
I have a different suspicion. I can’t help but wonder if this is a serious plan that some in Israel’s government leaked because they see what a crazy idea it is, and hope that by exposing it they can perhaps stop it. I’d like to think that’s the case (not that it’s a real plan, but that people care enough to leak it in the hopes that it won’t happen.)
who owns the Times of London?
Rupert Murdoch
exactly.
Which is why I highly doubt this article is an example of whistleblowing. It’s an example of propaganda and it serves a dual purpose of scaring Iran and intimidating America.
Israel would not leak plans of this type if they were serious plans.
reporting and Israel does not care what anybody thinks about them taking out the nation that recently threatened to wipe them off of the map, that’s why it is so easy for Bush and Cheney to go about things this way and remove Iran’s future nuclear capabilities all at the same time.
Tracy, I understand your point about Israelis inclination to use overwhelming force when challenged. I understand the psychology of it. But that is just one piece of the picture.
Israel actually cares a great deal what America thinks about them. And the problem they have is that they are entering a risky period of time where they will have a hard time sustaining the unquestioned support of Americans. This will become clear as the consequences of our failure of Iraq begin to emerge.
They also have to worry about the governments of Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. They have peace agreements with the first two and de facto peace with the last. They very much care about the stability of those regimes.
And those regimes would probably be secretly pleased to see Iran attacked (although nukes cross a dangerous moral boundary).
I don’t know if Israel has bunker busters or not. They probably do. But this is still bluster, because a leak of this type is treason. No sane person would leak this unless the plan was imminent. This is just a threat.
were on “W”‘s wish list I have read when he took office. I personally think it was really on Cheney’s wish list. They just recently got the whole deal figured out, how to turn a plain old bunker buster into one that is also a low yield tactical nuke to dig deeper into targets that are heavily hardened. The Bush administration said in 2002 I believe that this was a military capability that we did not have and that was immediately needed and now they made it. If Israel has these Booman they are ours.
It is with due respect I suggest you read the lead Editorial in The Independent UK posted in my diary’s comments. Also, in response to a comment, I wrote The Times is Murdock’s property. Whether or not this is part of a psy-ops, look ahead – the orchestra is being assembled for the grand concert.
From the editorial:
“Israel should give diplomacy more time to work.”
Cenk Uygur (how do you pronounce that?) has a piece up at HufPo that says everything important about this …
here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/are-we-still-going-to-sup_b_38001.html
Hmmm … not on their front page anymore, & I read it not an hour ago.
Some of his questions/points:
These quotes express my own thinking on the matter perfectly. The government of Israel is (& probably always has been) a hideous, hypocritical & corrupt thing that has never deserved our support.
(Of course I feel the same way about our own current administration.)
So, in the last analysis, I guess it is time to come & declare myself anti-Israel. This does not mean I am anti-Semitic but *Israel* is a disaster – for Europe, the Middle East & America, & for a vast number of Jews who simply want to live in peace & harmony with other people in the world.
MilitaryTracy, in one of her posts, talked about how Jewish culture allows for greater self-actualization of its people. That may be true, but the problem is that it is allowing the self-actualization of a band of mini-Hitlers & Mussolinis.
From Jabotinsky forward, Zionist leadership has been everything progressives deplore & only the suffering of innocent Jews in the Holocaust blinds us to that fact.
Well, enough is enough – Israel decries Ahmadinejad when he blusters on about “wiping Israel from the map”, why should we accept this kind of brinkmanship from Israel?
We shouldn’t – and from this day forward, I don’t.
I think Israel has the same problem with its neocons, religious fundamentalists and military industrial complex that we do, ramped up by paranoia that is justified in terms of how often in their history they have been hated and killed. However, that paranoia is now proving counterproductive in terms of acheiving real security and peace for the Israeli people.
My fear this morning though is still that our NeoCons and their NeoCons got themselves a little plan together, and our NeoCons gave their NeoCons our brand new tactical nuke bunker busters. Our sane people in our Pentagon told Cheney to go Cheney himself last year when he was all ready to use them on Iran. Cheney is such a fucker of the 1st degree that after his spanking he went out and worked on a new way to rob the same bank!
“I assume this is Israel’s way of holding a gun to our head to make us attack Iran so they won’t have to.”
I thought we didn`t deal with terrorists.
Plans for this sort of thing have been on the books for a long time. The Times is engaging in a marketing exercise because the timing seems right to sell newspapers on the strength of “updating” and old story.
No one got excited when
And last October, the BBC aired a documentary titled, “Will Israel bomb Iran?” that caused Jonathan Cook to issue this critique.
So, why the Times of London should have its panties in a wad now, probably has little to do with reporting news but much to do with recycling and refurbishing because it thinks the climate’s ripe.