Posted on 12/31/2009 9:33:32 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that Iran's recently diclosed second uranium enrichment plant is "immune" to conventional bombing. "The new site near Qom is meant for enrichment. What was revealed by the Iranians had been built over years and is located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack," Barak told parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee.
Iran notified the UN nuclear watchdog in September that it was building a second enrichment plant near the central shrine city of Qom, after Washington accused it of covertly evading its notification responsibilities under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Confirmation of the construction work drew criticism not only from Western governments but also from the United Nations.
Enriched uranium can make the fuel for nuclear power plants but in highly extended form can also produce the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
Along with Western governments, Israel suspects Iran of seeking to develop a weapons capability under the guise of a civil nuclear programme, an accusation Tehran denies.
Along with its US ally, Israel, the region's sole if undeclared nuclear power, has refused to rule out a resort to military action to prevent Iran developing a bomb.
Barak said he feared Iran could develop a weapon by 2011.
"I believe that by early 2010 Iran will hold threshold technology (for building a bomb). That means that if it wanted, it could develop nuclear weapons within a year from obtaining threshold technology," a senior official quoted him as telling the parliamentary committee.
(Excerpt) Read more at spacewar.com ...
Drop a bunker buster on top of it to open a channel and then drop a nuke into the hole. The technology exists.
They (Israel) don’t need a bunker-buster. Just tactical nukes with high-yield uranium.. The sites may not be destroyed but they will be hot for the next 100 or so years.
IMO the first one explodes, the other two will evaporate before they are close enough to the target. Perhaps three strikes with, say, 5 minutes between them might work... even that depends on how the machinery of those bombs works under extreme radiation.
However any nuclear strike option, on part of either Israel or the USA, is politically impossible. Iran is not at war with anyone. The country that dropped the bomb and killed, say, 100,000 people and caused widespread contamination of half of the Europe and Asia would certainly be punished - by a mandatory, worldwide trade embargo, for example. The General Assembly of the UN will gladly vote for that, overruling the [stalemate in the] Security Council.
I think the statement of Ehud Barak is crafted to explain, primarily to Israelis, why there will be no strike. I personally believe that impossibility of taking the Qom site out is just one facet of the problem. Much bigger problem is that Iran can inflict an unacceptable damage to Israel in return, just using its existing, conventional weapons. Iran's missiles may be poorly built, but they have plenty of them, on mobile launchers in mountains. By the time Iran is out of missiles there will be nothing left standing in Israel.
I for one am shocked, SHOCKED, that the Iranians would be so inconsiderate as to place a weapons creation facility such that it would not be vulnerable to conventional airstrikes.
Don't count Israel out. I've read the back of the book, and they win!
Thank you very much. I really enjoy Cold War stuff.
Israel has a multi layered air defense network that uses the combination of PAC-3 and their Arrow missile. Cobra-Juniper.
The higher yield nuke would produce a very high overpressure.
I would guess conventional deep penetrator bunker busters (by the nature of what they do) are pretty harden and designed to take a lot of G-forces and temperature before going boom. I think the follow ups would zoom right through the loose debris easier than the primary zoomed through a couple hundred feet of solid rock.
That’s probably the bus. All intentional.
Thats it. Their first solid booster rocket.
Notice the poster on the wall behind it.?
Yea. It makes me sick. Just imagine a couple of years down the road. They will graduate to intercontinental range.It seems that the Iranians has surpassed the North Koreans in rocket technology. The student has become the teacher.
Obama and his clan have no idea who they are trying to play nice with. This is a religion to these people. The 12th Iman and all.
I agree.
“Glass that rock!”
Yes, according to Wikipedia there are warheads that can dig pretty deep into the ground. However Iranians placed their plant even deeper - it is built under a mountain, just like the Cheyenne Mountain facility in the USA.
I think the follow ups would zoom right through the loose debris easier than the primary zoomed through a couple hundred feet of solid rock.
One common concern about that is that it's difficult to achieve precise aiming when there is so much dust in the air after the first strike. Optical targeting is impossible, and GPS may be unreliable too - besides, you have only milliseconds to react, and you need to place the follow-up bombs all within a few feet from each other.
When the $hit hits the fan the results will be of biblical proportions right down to divine intervention.
Rest assured in those prophecies.<
Yes it seems we are right on track for the big one! All the pieces are falling into place. You best know whose side your on!!
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