Israel plans to nuke Iran: Report

LONDON, Jan 8 - Israel is planning to strike Iran's main nuclear facilities with nuclear bunker busters as military commanders are increasingly convinced that conventional attacks may no longer be enough to annihilate the well-defended Iranian enrichment plants, Britain's The Sunday Times revealed on Sunday, January 7.

"As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished," one Israeli military source told the Times.

Two of the Israeli air force squadrons, based at Hatzerim in the Negev desert and Tel Nof, south of Tel Aviv, are training to blow up an enrichment plant in Natanz, a heavy water plant at Arak and a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan, using laser-guided bombs, according to several Israeli military sources.

The bombs would open tunnels into the targets to be followed by "mini-nukes," which would explode deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

Israeli pilots have flown to Gibraltar in recent weeks to train for the 2,000 mile round-trip to the Iranian targets, the sources said.

Three possible routes to Iran had been mapped out, including one over Turkey.

The "mini-nukes" would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

Israeli officials were quick to dismiss the Times's report as "absurd" and "incorrect."

The military sources, however, told the British newspaper that the preparations have been overseen Commander of the Israeli Air Force, Major General Eliezer Shkedi,

The Times was the first to reporton Israel's nuclear capabilities in 1986, based on leaked information by whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years in prison for blowing the whistle on Israel’s nuclear program.

Israel has been always sensitive to talk directly or even indirectly about its nuclear arsenal.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert came under fire last month when he implicitly indicated that Israel owned nuclear weapons.

Israelis believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with experts saying it has no less than 200 nuclear warheads.

Recently declassified British documents showed London helped Israel obtain its nuclear bomb 40 years ago.

Hit Back

"Any action against the Islamic republic will not go without a response," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini in statements carried Sunday by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The aggressor would regret the action very quickly."

Husseini said the disclosed plans confirmed that Israel did possess nuclear weapons.

"This comes after the confession of the Israel prime minister who acknowledged that the Israeli regime possesses a nuclear weapon," Hosseini said.

"It will convince world public opinion that the main threat for the world and the region is the Zionist regime," he added, insisting that Iran's nuclear program was only for peaceful purposes.

The UN Security Council voted unanimously last month to slap sanctions on Iran to try to stop uranium enrichment that Western powers fear could lead to making bombs.

Analysts told the Times that Iranian retaliation for such a strike could range from disruption of oil supplies to the West to terrorist attacks against Jewish targets around the world.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a Pentagon adviser, said Iran could try to close the Strait of Hormuz, the route for 20% of the world’s oil.

Others believe that the Iranians could hit back by their sophisticated ballistic Shehab missiles.

They said Tehran should take the report seriously as Israel crippled Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak with airstrikes in 1981.