Iran nuclear planning 'similar to Iraq'
11/04/2006 - 09:53
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US administration officials say they remain committed to a diplomatic solution to ensure Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons, but they will not rule out military action as an option, even as they try to calm down talk about military planning.
“I know here in Washington prevention means force,” President George Bush said yesterday.
“It doesn’t mean force necessarily, in this case, it means diplomacy,” the president added, calling recent newspaper and magazine reports about US military planning on Iran “just wild speculation”.
Current and former government officials involved in war-planning discussions over the past five years say the US has drafted a menu of options. One official said the attention on Iran has increased markedly in recent months.
All of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
The planning is similar to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, which has been captured in books including Bob Woodward’s Plan Of Attack. Similar blueprints also have been done, but never used, on any number of adversaries, including North Korea.
The plans are aimed particularly at facilities scattered across Iran known to be or suspected of being tied to the nuclear programme. Within those sites, there could be hundreds of individual targets. The options include:
:: Special operations aimed at sabotaging various sites or clearing a safe pathway into the country for an air attack.
One of the officials said such missions, often to populated areas, would be dangerous in such a closed country as Iran and probably could not be accomplished without leaving fingerprints.
:: Air and sea-based strikes that would use a variety of munitions including earth-penetrating bombs that would target underground bunkers.
In some cases, several bombs would need to be fired at the same target to reach the most fortified facilities, a security strategy the Iranians adopted based on lessons learned during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
:: Some combination of the above.
The Iranian regime insists it wants only to produce uranium for peaceful civilian purposes, such as electricity generation. Yet Iran operated a covert nuclear programme for two decades, and the US and a number of its allies believe the regime’s aim is a nuclear weapon.
National Intelligence Director John Negroponte told US Congress in February that Iran is as much as a decade away from producing a nuclear weapon. But some estimates put that as low as three years.
Even the best-laid plans to go after the nuclear programme may be flawed in execution.
Two officials with extensive military experience said airstrikes would be a key option. But they said the US Air Force often overstates the accuracy of precision strikes, which would be needed in Iran.
War planners have to figure out how to handle Iran’s expected retaliation. The country could order terrorist attacks through Hezbollah.
Iran could also try to cripple the world economy by putting a stranglehold on the oil that moves through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow, strategically important waterway running to Iran’s south.
Perhaps the best-known site linked to the nuclear programme is the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility, located about 160 miles south of Tehran.
David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, describes the site as a complex in a 75-foot-deep hole, covered by layers of materials. It is unclear whether that includes concrete.
The site is designed to hold a cascade of 50,000 centrifuges that could be used to enrich uranium, but Albright said the Iranians have shown signs that they are having problems with the technology.
One outstanding question for the International Atomic Energy Agency is whether there is a hidden, undeclared nuclear programme.
Albright said inspectors have found a number of inconsistencies in Iranian documents and a laptop associated with the programme. He believes there has to be a parallel programme.
As tensions increase, the talk of war planning could make the diplomatic dialogue with Iran even more difficult. “It makes negotiations much harder because Iran is left with the view that, no matter what we negotiate, the US is going to attack,” Albright said.
Meanwhile, Iran could easily create back-up nuclear sites. A gas centrifuge facility, for instance, could be moved to a warehouse in an industrial area, making it very difficult to find.
There are disputes now about the quality of the intelligence on Iran.
Some officials say it has improved, thanks to soil samples, overhead reconnaissance, old-fashioned spying, information from the IAEA and other intelligence. But not everyone is sold.
Embarrassed by the flawed oversight in the run-up to Iraq, members of US Congress are pressing the Bush administration for details on Iran. A spokesman for Negroponte declined to comment on specific issues regarding Tehran.
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