By Elaine Shannon
5 March 2006 Time Magazine
As the U.N. Security Council prepares to debate Iran’s nuclear ambitions–perhaps as early as next week–Bush Administration officials are readying a new intelligence briefing for council members on Tehran’s weapons programs. It will rely mainly on circumstantial evidence, much of it from documents found on a laptop purportedly purloined from an Iranian nuclear engineer and obtained by the CIA in 2004. U.S. officials insist the material is strong but concede they have no smoking gun.
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A report issued last week by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says Iranian officials have dismissed a number of the laptop documents as fabricated.
I wonder if this power point (pdf via) was simply given a makeover.
In 2003, Paul Craig Roberts wrote, ” For the neoconservatives, the advantage of a nuclear over a conventional attack is that the former solves the manpower problem and, by obliterating the target, conveniently rules out discovering the embarrassing fact of nonexistent WMD.”
It appears all that remains is deciding on the targets.
Even if tactical nukes aren’t used there could still be nuclear fallout.
The most horrific impact of a US assault on Iran, of course, would be the potentially catastrophic number of casualties. The Oxford Research Group predicted that up to 10,000 people would die if the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites, and that an attack on the Bushehr nuclear reactor could send a radioactive cloud over the Gulf. If the US uses nuclear weapons, such as earth-penetrating “bunker buster” bombs, radioactive fallout would become even more disastrous.
10,000 or more deaths and the best intelligence provides “no smoking gun.” Mass murder.
As the crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme deepens, Oxford Research Group has published Iran: Consequences of a War by Professor Paul Rogers. This briefing paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the likely nature of US or Israeli military action that would be intended to disable Iran’s nuclear capabilities. It outlines both the immediate consequences in terms of loss of human life, facilities and infrastructure, and also the likely Iranian responses. We have also published an update of Dr. Frank Barnaby’s technical paper on Iran’s Nuclear Activities.