Posted on 01/24/2006 5:48:30 PM PST by blam
Iran races to defend nuclear facilities
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent and Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
(Filed: 25/01/2006)
Iran is racing to dig a network of tunnels and upgrade its air defences to protect its nuclear facilities from possible attacks by America or Israel, it was reported yesterday.
Israel this week issued thinly-veiled warnings that it has drawn up plans for pre-emptive strikes against Iran. The United States insists it will not take the military option "off the table".
Seeking to avoid a repeat of Israel's 1981 air raid on Osiraq, Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued orders for the underground complexes to be completed by the beginning of July, Jane's Defence Weekly reported.
It said the network of facilities deep underground or in the sides of mountains has been built with help from North Korean designers.
Atomic inspectors discovered in 2003 that Iran was building a vast underground complex to enrich uranium near the town of Natanz.
But other facilities, such as the uranium conversion plant in Isfahan, are still above ground and exposed to attack.
Iran insists it only seeks to develop a nuclear industry for "peaceful" purposes, but the West is convinced it is trying to build nuclear weapons.
Teheran provoked an international crisis earlier this month when it restarted the enrichment programme, under the guise of "research", after it had been frozen for two years during negotiations with European countries.
At an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna next week, western countries will seek to report Teheran to the United Nations for possible sanctions.
We should wait while most of this revealing activity is being carried on. It provides valuable information as to where what and how the Iranians hope to protect their doomed Jihad-makers. We should do the all-out airstrike, replete with bunker-busters galore, just about the time the medieval troglodytes begin to move the bad stuff into their caverns. Then we make their cities into toxic/nuclear waste dumps for them, free of charge.
"This attack will not be on the regime's toys, but on the regime itself. Kill Ahmadinejad and the other nutcases, and there's nobody to order the nukes launched, plus a sane Iranian government might succeed to power."
Difficult to effect regime change that way. It could be done with a revolution, but Israel cannot lead the Iranian people in that---only the US could play that role.
"Wouldn't it be great if we made all this noise about their nuclear sites knowing they would move heaven and earth to protect them at all cost, and all the time we are preparing to move in quickly and occupy their oil fields and associated infrastructure?"
Yeah, it would be great. All their oil is in one small province---Khusikstan---located right next to Iraq! (and inhabited by Persian-hating Arabs who are practically in rebellion---the Iranian gov't charged the British with inciting them.)
Very well stated!
I don't think they're going to tell us....
L
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