By Sherwood Ross: U.S. plans to attack Iran with a mix of nuclear and
conventional weapons have been in readiness since June, 2005, a
distinguished authority on international affairs says.
“Confirmed by military documents as well as official
statements, both the U.S. and Israel contemplate the use of nuclear
weapons directed against Iran,” writes University of Ottawa Professor
(Emeritus) Michel Chossudovsky, in a recently released book entitled “Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War”
The plans were formulated in 2004. The previous year,
Congress gave the Pentagon the green light to use tactical nukes in
conventional war theatres such as the Middle East and Central Asia,
allocating $6 billion in 2004 alone to create this new generation of
“defensive” weapons.
“In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney ordered USSTRATCOM
(Strategic Command) to draft a ‘contingency plan’ that included “a
large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical
nuclear weapons,” Chossudovsky writes. The plan went beyond even the
Pentagon’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review(NPR)’s “contingency plans” for an
offensive “first strike use” of nuclear weapons against Russia and
China as well as Iran and North Korea.
The 2005 plan identified more than 450 strategic targets in
Iran, including numerous suspect nuclear-weapons-program development
sites. The plan, incredibly, was rationalized on a second 9/11 type
attack on the US that Cheney believed Iran would allegedly support!
“President Obama has largely
endorsed the doctrine of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons formulated
by the previous administration,” Chossudovsky writes in his new book,
“Towards a World War III Scenario” (Global Research). His Administration
“has also intimated it will use nukes in the event of an Iran response
to an Israeli attack on Iran.”
Chossudovsky points out, “The new nuclear doctrine turns
concepts and realities upside down. It not only denies the devastating
impacts of nuclear weapons, it states, in no uncertain terms, that
nuclear weapons are ‘safe’ and their use in the battlefield will ensure
‘minimal collateral damage and reduce the probability of escalation.’
The issue of radioactive fallout is not even acknowledged with regard to
tactical nuclear weapons, neither is the issue of ‘Nuclear Winter’.”
“What is unfolding [in relation to Iran] is the outright
legitimization of war in the name of an illusive notion of global
security. America’s mini-nukes, with an explosive capacity of up to six
times a Hiroshima bomb, are upheld as a ‘humanitarian’ bomb, whereas
Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons are branded as an indisputable threat
to global security,” Chossudovsky writes.
He points out that a U.S.-Israeli strike against Iran would
probably not be limited to Iran’s nuclear facilities but likely would
be “an all-out air attack on both military and civilian infrastructure,
transport systems, factories and public buildings.”
Employed would be “the entire gamut of new advanced weapons
systems, including electro-magnetic weapons and environmental
modification techniques (ENMOD),” Chossudovsky writes.
He notes that the U.S. has stepped up its military
shipments to Israel, its NATO allies, and to countries bordering Iran.
Israel in 2004 took shipment of the first of 500 U.S.-made BLU 109
“bunker buster” bombs, and the U.S. has supplied thermonuclear bombs to
Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey, and Great Britain.
Turkey alone, a partner in the U.S. anti-Iran coalition, has 90
thermonuclear B61 bombs at its Incirlik nuclear air base.
“It is not Iran and North Korea which are a threat to
global security by the United States of America and Israel,” he adds.
What’s more, Western European governments have joined the bandwagon and
“have endorsed the U.S.-led military initiative against Iran.”
He goes on to say, “At no point since the first atomic bomb
was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, has humanity been closer to
the unthinkable—a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread in
terms of radioactive fallout over a large part of the Middle East.”
It may also be noted the U.S. currently has several,
nuclear-armed carrier task forces in waters near Iran and has built more
than 40 military bases in the countries surrounding Iran. The U.S.
reportedly has 20,000 nuclear bombs available to use and Israel
reportedly has another 200, whereas Iran is not known to have one. U.S.
military spending of $700 billion a year, moreover, is 100 times the
rate of Iran’s $7 billion annual military outlay.
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