The administration of US President George W. Bush is planning a massive
bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to
destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker
magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.
Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejad meets
with female members of Iran's parliament in Tehran, Iran April 4, 2006.
[Reuters] |
The article by investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh said that Bush and others in the White House have come
to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.
"That's the name they're using," the report quoted a former senior
intelligence official as saying.
A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying that
"this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change
the power structure in Iran, and that means war."
The former intelligence officials depicts planning as "enormous," "hectic"
and "operational," Hersh writes.
One former defense official said the military planning was premised on a
belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious
leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government," The New
Yorker pointed out.
In recent weeks, the president has quietly initiated a series of talks on
plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of the House of
Representatives, including at least one Democrat, the report said.
One of the options under consideration involves the possible use of a
bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, to insure the
destruction of Iran's main centrifuge plant at Natanz, Hersh writes.
But the former senior intelligence official said the attention given to the
nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the military, and some
officers have talked about resigning after an attempt to remove the nuclear
option from the evolving war plans in Iran failed, according to the report.
"There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing
nuclear weapons against other countries," the magazine quotes the Pentagon
adviser as saying.
The adviser warned that bombing Iran could provoke "a chain reaction" of
attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world and might also
reignite Hezbollah.
"If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle," the
adviser is quoted as telling The New Yorker.