Israel Targeting Iran's Nuclear Processing Plant
Inside The Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 29, 2003
Israel has ready a plan to bomb Iran's Bushehr nuclear-power plant
should the Persian Gulf coast facility, now under construction, begin producing
weapons-grade material, an insider tells us.
This source says Israel
has mapped out a route its jet fighters would take to destroy what is designed
to be a two-reactor plant. A successful strike would ensure that the radical Tehran
regime does not develop nuclear weapons. Iran has tested 600-mile-range ballistic
missiles that can reach Israel and carry nuclear, biological or chemical warheads.
Russia has signed an $800 million contract to provide two reactors
for the plant near the port city of Bushehr. The United States opposes the deal,
as well as any nuclear program in Iran.
Israeli F-16s penetrated Iraqi
airspace in 1981 to bomb the Osiraq nuclear-power plant, at the Tuwaitha nuclear
center near Baghdad. Analysts believe the action, while condemned by the international
community, kept Saddam Hussein from acquiring the bomb.
U.S. Central Command
has contingency plans for war with Iran, but there is no active discussion of
invading a country that President Bush has put in the "axis of evil."
Still, some in the Pentagon talk unofficially of what would be needed to take
out the Bushehr plant.