BREAKING NEWS: Israelis reportedly have plans to take out Iranian nuclear facilities with tactical nukes!
Or so sources tell the Times of London.
That they'll take out the nuclear facilities, I have no doubt at all. I've said all along that finally the United States needn't worry about a military response to the Iranian nuclear program, because Israel wouldn't tolerate a second nuclear power in the Middle East- and especially one that talks so often and so glibly about exterminating it.
That the Israelis will use nukes, I seriously doubt. The Arabs, the Far Left, and the depressingly large contingent of conservative Lutheran anti-Semites who seem to lurk underneath so many rocks these days to the contrary, the boys and girls in Tel Aviv aren't crazy, nor do they desire to do anyone a bit of harm that can be avoided consistent with the survival of their own spouses and children.
But say your prayers. This still could be very dicey. The Iranians are not going to take kindly even to a conventional strike against their nuclear facilities, and the Israelis will not meet with so mild a reaction as they did when they bombed poor, picked-on Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor back in 1981,
Poor, harmless Saddam Hussein.
ADDENDUM: I am fascinated. The entire blogosphere seems to be buying this story at face value.
That such plans exist as a contingency I do not doubt. But the notion that Israel actually has any thought of implementing them is just plain nuts- though the anti-Semitic crowd probably is eating the story up.
Israel, if necessary, will take out those plants. But the munitions used for the purpose will be conventional. To use nukes would require somebody as crazy as Israel's anti-Semitic critics- and the Israeli cabinet just isn't that crazy.
Comments
"Of course, since Katsav will have to use nukes to penetrate the bunkers, Israel will still have the plausible deniability that a huge radiation plume is just, "illegal" nuclear material the Iranians had been concentrating, along with the tons of UF6 gas released by the "conventional" Israeli explosives. Beautiful CYA. And the fact that the Israeli planes passed through Iraqi air space controlled by the US, Bush will say he thought they were on a mission of mercy to the Pakistani refugees, and just happened to have a surge in place to pincer the enraged Irani jihadists."
It's an old tin-hat rehash from 2004. Someone with oil futures must be in a desparate piff to keep oil above $60, probably the Brits' pound sterling.
2007 will bring US unparalled peace.