Pentagon draws 'Three-day blitz' plan for Iran Adam Doster

Published: Saturday September 1, 2007





Print This Email This A national security expert revealed to The London Times that the Pentagon has "drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians military capability in three days." Speaking at a meeting organized by the conservative foreign policy journal The National Interest, Alexis Debat -- director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center -- said the U.S. military had concluded: "Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same." It was, he added, a "very legitimate strategic calculus." According to the paper, one Washington source said the "temperature was rising" to launch an Iranian attack inside the Bush administration. This information comes on the heels of reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency last week that cited "significant cooperation" with Iran over its nuclear program, including the slowing of uranium enrichment. Israel, a close ally of the United States, has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, making its own preparations for airstrikes. If the United States back downs, it is said to be "ready to attack." The entire article can be read HERE. RAW STORY recently reported that European analysts had prepared a paper declaring the US had the capability for such a strike. According to the analysis, the United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles. The paper, "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East"  written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament  was exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo. "We wrote the report partly as we were surprised that this sort of quite elementary analysis had not been produced by the many well resourced Institutes in the United States," wrote Plesch in an email to Raw Story on Tuesday. Plesch and Butcher examine "what the military option might involve if it were picked up off the table and put into action" and conclude that based on open source analysis and their own assessments, the US has prepared its military for a "massive" attack against Iran, requiring little contingency planning and without a ground invasion. That story, by Larisa Alexandrovna, is available here.



