I tend to dispute this report. The whole reason for bombing Iran is to set them back 5 or 10 years in their efforts to build a nuclear warhead. If this is accurate, then we have a serious problem on our hands...
America and Israel are secretly drawing up plans to deal with an Iran that has acquired nuclear weapons, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.
Teheran's two arch-foes are preparing for what they have long declared is an unacceptable scenario, as the prospects for air strikes to cripple Iran's nuclear network fade, and China and Russia undermine efforts to forge an international sanctions regime.
The United States and Israel are sticking publicly to their threats not to allow the Islamic Republic to develop an atomic bomb. But intelligence chiefs and military planners have given warning that Iran has done better at hiding and dispersing its nuclear facilities than previously assessed, this newspaper has been told.
"The more they looked at the intelligence and the information they had, the more pessimistic they have become about what could be achieved on the operational front by military action," said Dan Goure, a Pentagon adviser. "Military strikes might only set the programme back a couple of years, but the current thinking is that it is just not worth the risks." A political rethink has also begun in Israel, where security policy is linked to its status - never publicly admitted - as the region's only nuclear state.
Israel is believed to be equipping a fleet of German-made submarines with atomic weapons ready to respond to any nuclear threat from Teheran, and Ehud Barack, the defence minister, is keen to develop a sophisticated ballistic anti-missile system.
US hawks linked to Vice-President Dick Cheney have argued that a co-ordinated aerial and submarine-launched bombardment could set Iran's nuclear programme back by five to 10 years.
ZIP
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