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The Sunday Times January 07, 2007
Focus: Mission Iran
Israel will not tolerate Iran going nuclear and military sources say it will
use tactical strikes unless Iran abandons its programme. Is Israel bluffing
or might it really push the button? Uzi Mahnaimi in New York and Sarah Baxter
in Washington report
In an Israeli air force bunker in Tel Aviv, near the concert hall for the
Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, Major General Eliezer Shkedi might one day
conduct operations of a perilous kind. Should the order come from the Israeli
prime minister, it will be Shkedi’s job as air force commander to orchestrate
a tactical nuclear strike on Iran.
Two fast assault squadrons based in the Negev desert and in Tel Nof, south of
Tel Aviv, are already training for the attack.
On a plasma screen, Shkedi will be able to see dozens of planes advance
towards Iran, as well as the electronic warfare aircraft jamming the Iranian
and Syrian air defences and the rescue choppers hovering near the border,
ready to move in and pluck out the pilots should the mission go wrong.
Another screen will show live satellite images of the Iranian nuclear sites.
The prime target will be Natanz, the deep and ferociously protected bunker
south of Tehran where the Iranians are churning out enriched uranium in
defiance of the United Nations security council.
If things go according to plan, a pilot will first launch a conventional
laser-guided bomb to blow a shaft down through the layers of hardened
concrete. Other pilots will then be ready to drop low-yield one kiloton
nuclear weapons into the hole. The theory is that they will explode deep
underground, both destroying the bunker and limiting the radioactive fallout.
The other potential targets are Iran’s uranium conversion facility at
Isfahan — uncomfortably near a metropolis of 4.5m people — and the heavy
water power reactor at Arak, which might one day be able to produce enough
plutonium to make a bomb. These will be hit with conventional bombs.
In recent weeks Israeli pilots have been flying long-haul as far as Gibraltar
to simulate the 2,000-mile round trip to Natanz. “There is no 99% success in
this mission. It must be a perfect 100% or better not at all,” one of the
pilots expected to fly on the mission told The Sunday Times.
The Israelis say they hope as fervently as the rest of the world that this
attack will never take place. There is clearly an element of sabre-rattling
in their letting it be known the plan exists and that the pilots are already
in training. But in the deeply dangerous and volatile Middle East,
contingency plans can become horrible reality.
NO nuclear weapon has been fired in anger since the American bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Should Israel take such a drastic step, it
would inflame world opinion — particularly in Muslim states — and unleash
retaliation from Iran and its allies. But Israelis have become increasingly
convinced that a “second holocaust” of the Jews is brewing, stoked by Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president and chief Holocaust denier, who has
repeatedly called for Israel to be destroyed.
Western Europe and the United States have been trying to persuade Tehran to
drop its nuclear ambitions, using the carrot of co-operation with a
legitimate nuclear energy programme and the stick of UN sanctions. But they
have had no effect.
As a result, Israel sees itself standing on its own and fighting for its very
existence. It got a taste of what Iran was capable of during last summer’s
war in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah, Tehran’s proxy troops fighting from
bunkers secretly built by Iranian military engineers, humiliated the Israeli
army and rained missiles into northern Israel.
Every Israeli government has vowed never to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons.
Ariel Sharon, when he was prime minister, ordered the military to be ready
for a conventional strike on Iran’s nuclear programme. Since then, however,
the Iranians have strengthened their nuclear facilities and air defences,
making a conventional strike less likely to succeed.
“There are 24 strong batteries around Natanz, making it one of the most
protected sites on earth,” said an Israeli military source. Its centrifuge
halls, where the uranium is enriched, are heavily protected at least 70ft
underground.
Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, recently “let slip” the world’s worst-kept
secret that Israel is a nuclear power; Israeli defence experts are now openly
debating the use of nukes against Iran. Shlomo Mofaz, a reservist colonel in
Israeli military intelligence, believes that tactical nuclear weapons will be
required to penetrate the defences that Iran has built around its nuclear
facilities.
Israel developed tactical nuclear weapons in the early 1970s for use on the
battlefield. In an attack on Iran, its air force would be expected to use a
low-yield nuclear device of 1 kiloton (equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT),
loaded on a bunker-buster missile.
“If the nuclear device explodes deep underground there will be no radioactive
fallout,” said Dr Ephraim Asculai of the Tel Aviv Institute for Strategic
Studies, who worked for the Israel Atomic Energy Commission for more than 40
years.
Professor Peter Zimmerman, a nuclear physicist at King’s College, London, was
less sure. “The definition of low-yield nuclear weapons is not easy,” he
said. “I assume that it includes any device which is less than 5 kilotons. If
such a bunker-buster missile is exploded at 70ft below ground” — thought to
be the minimum depth of the hidden centrifuges in Natanz — “some radioactive
fallout is expected.”
Nonetheless, Professor Martin Van Creveld, an Israeli military expert, said
last week that tactical nuclear weapons were “the only way, if there is a way
at all, to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites”.
Some senior American defence analysts agree. One source with ties to the
Pentagon said: “There is no way for Israel to engage effectively in such a
strike without using nuclear weapons.” But, he asked: “Would the Israelis
dare?”
For all their military preparations, not even the Israelis are sure of the
answer. Their decision rests to a great extent on their assessment of two
further questions. How close is Tehran to having a nuclear bomb? And what
does Washington really intend to do about it?
The actions and rhetoric of Ahmadinejad have been deliberately provocative.
Last week he boasted that the Iranians would not only continue their atomic
programme but also give a “historic slap in the face” to nations that opposed
it. He has vowed that America, Israel and Britain will disappear “like the
pharaohs” of Egypt and he believes that oil-rich Iran is well on its way to
becoming the regional superpower.
Next month, on the anniversary of the Islamic revolution, he intends to
celebrate what he calls his country’s mastery of nuclear technology. He
promised that 3,000 centrifuges would be ready by the end of last year and
that 60,000 would ultimately be in place. In the event, technical problems
have slowed the programme. The Iranians are believed to have installed only
500 centrifuges at Natanz and they will reach 2,000 by spring at the
earliest.
This is enough, however, to convince some Israelis that Iran is reaching
the “point of no return” at which it has the technical know-how to build a
nuclear bomb.
Ahmadinejad insists that Iran is developing only peaceful nuclear energy, but
the development of long-ra
