Report: Israel Planning Nuclear Strike

The Sunday Times of London is reporting that Israel is planning a nuclear strike against Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. The strike is described as involving conventional nukes to open a tunnel underground after which "tactical" nuclear weapons (that's "weapons", with an 's') are to be used to destroy the facilities.

Israel has already issued a denial of the report.

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An aside: If you do a Google or Yahoo news search on this story using the terms "Israel plans nuclear Iran", for example, you'll find that the overwhelming majority (if not all) of the stories covering the original report on these plans come from media sources outside of the US. But the US media is well represented in the list of stories detailing Israel's denial of the report. I though that was interesting.

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These "tactical" nukes are said to have about 1/15th of destructive force of the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the desired underground detonation is designed to limit the risk of nuclear fallout. There now, that's comforting, isn't it?

In light of the Israeli government's denials, I would be remiss if I didn't point out an earlier post on these pages where I noted Dick Cheney's foreshadowing of these very events...

Over a year ago Vice President Dick Cheney foreshadowed the end-game:

"Well, one of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked, that if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."

That sounds so much like a tacit recommendation cloaked in plausible deniability that I just can't stand it. But one could argue that he didn't mean it that way at all. After all, that's what plausible deniability is all about.

But Thursday, President Bush gave us the confirmation and removed all doubt. In the same press statement cited here earlier, where he described this as "American policy", he also said:

And now's the time to address the root cause of the problem, and the root cause of the problem is terrorist groups trying to stop the advance of democracies. Hezbollah attacked Israel. I believe Hezbollah -- I know Hezbollah is connected to Iran. And now's the time for the world to confront this danger."

That's where this is going. That's what this is all for. All the rest is pretext. Israel is initiating a plan drawn up by us to facilitate a military strike, possibly a nuclear one, on Iran. This is the latest great event that we will be asked to believe will revolutionize the middle-east for the better. It is an apocalyptic vision bathed in blood. What's worse, it will fail and it will backfire on all of us. God help us all.

The point still stands.