US Considers Use of Nuclear Weapons Against Iran
Saturday, April 8, 2006
by Agence France Presse ()
The administration of President George W. Bush is planning a massive
bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear
bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The
New Yorker magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.
The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh
( 0417fa_fact) said 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,” the report quoted a former senior
intelligence official as saying.
A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying
that “this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem
is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war.”
The former intelligence officials depicts planning as “enormous,”
“hectic” and “operational,” Hersh writes.
One former defense official said the military planning was premised on
a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the
religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the
government,” The New Yorker pointed out.
In recent weeks, the president has quietly initiated a series of talks
on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of the House of
Representatives, including at least one Democrat, the report said.
One of the options under consideration involves the possible use of a
bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, to insure
the destruction of Iran’s main centrifuge plant at Natanz, Hersh
writes.
But the former senior intelligence official said the attention given
to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the
military, and some officers have talked about resigning after an
attempt to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans in
Iran failed, according to the report.
“There are very strong sentiments within the military against
brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the magazine
quotes the Pentagon adviser as saying.
The adviser warned that bombing Iran could provoke “a chain reaction”
of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world
and might also reignite Hezbollah.
“If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle,” the
adviser is quoted as telling The New Yorker.