Bush 'planning nuclear Iran strike'
Article in New Yorker says that U.S. government is preparing a massive campaign to neutralize Iranian nuclear sites. Iranian President Ahmadinejad is compared in the White House to Hitler
The U.S. government is planning to carry out massive bombardment against Iran and using bunker-busting nuclear bombs in order to destroy facilities and development centers in which nuclear weapons exist. These details will be exposed in a new report as part of an investigation in the New Yorker, to be publicized April 17.
The AFP paraphrases Seymour Hersh, the article's author, as saying that “Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.”
"'That’s the name they’re using.' They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war? ” a former senior U.S. intelligence agent is quoted as saying.
The same agent described the plan being formulated in the White House as "enormous" and "emotional."
The article states that "a government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was 'absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb' if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do 'what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.'"
Another Pentagon official said that the current White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the balance of power in Iran.
'Hizbullah comes into play'
The official added that "Hizbullah comes into play.” The article reported that "one of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface. That number of centrifuges could provide enough enriched uranium for about twenty nuclear warheads a year."
In the course of the article, a former Defense Minister clerk tells the New Yorker that the White House is planning “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’”
