US plans nuke hit on Iran: Report

Whether you believe it is because of the "Israely lobby" or it because of an overall strategy to bring peace through war, it appears that the US is indeed going to bomb Iran's nuclear ambitions. At this point I'm rather ambivalent. When the pull-push in Iraq started I was anxious. I wanted it to start quickly because I thought that the longer we waited, the worse it would be for our troops. This time...this time I feel like this administration has bungled so much of our foreign policy that to me it doesn't matter when go into Iran or if we go into Iran at all.

Now in the past I've tried to shape my views of an Iran-attack through the prism of logic. I figured we'd be stopped by any alliance between Russia, China and Iran. What I've come to realize is that the Bush administration doesn't so much rely on logic as it does intuition. And as I've further realized, they have the intuition of a 6-year-old with ADD.

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 Ahmedinejad would attack Israel or US forces in the West Asia, if Iran obtains atomic weapons, is what drives American planning for the destruction of Tehran’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, like the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One alleged target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, 200 miles south of Tehran.

Although Iran claims that its nuclear programme is peaceful, US and European intelligence agencies are certain that Tehran 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 magazine 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 where military chiefs and officials from Downing Street and the foreign office discussed the consequences of an US-led attack on Iran.

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 UK-led push for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear standoff, 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. Iran has been developing a series of bunkers and facilities to provide hidden command centres for its leaders and to protect its nuclear infrastructure.

The election of Ahmedinejad last year, has hardened attitudes within the Bush Administration.

Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official told Hersh. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’”

Despite America's public commitment to diplomacy, there is a growing belief in Washington that the only solution to the crisis is regime change. A senior Pentagon consultant said that Mr Bush 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".

Publicly, the US insists it remains committed to diplomacy to solve the crisis. But with Russia apparently intent on vetoing any threat of punitive action at the UN, the Bush administration is also planning for unilateral military action. Hersh repeated his claims that the US has intensified clandestine activities inside Iran, using special forces to identify targets and establish contact with anti-Teheran ethnic-minority groups.

The senior defence officials said that Mr Bush is "determined to deny Iran the opportunity to begin a pilot programme, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium".