What are we to make of
Seymour Hersh's bombshell, in this week's
New Yorker, that not only is President George W. Bush keen to attack Iran's nuclear facilities but that several higher-ups in the White House and the Pentagon would like to do so with nuclear weapons?
According to Hersh, an "option plan," presented this past winter by the Pentagon to the White House, calls for the use of B61-11 nuclear bunker-busters against Iran's underground sites, especially the Natanz facility, which houses the centrifuges needed to enrich uranium and which is reported to be dug 75 feet beneath the earth's surface. (If it really is that deep, and if Bush wanted to
destroy it and not just disable its operations briefly, a non-nuclear bomb wouldn't be powerful enough.)
Hersh also reports that the Joint Chiefs of Staff tried to remove the nuclear option from "the evolving war plan for Iran," but the White House insisted on leaving it in. The chiefs will soon give Bush "a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran." Some officers are thinking about resigning if he rejects their views.