Focus: Taking aim at Iran
Uzi Mahnaimi and Tony Allen-Mills report The Sunday Times March 13, 2005
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1522800,00.html

Israeli troops are training for an assault on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Will it happen and what would be the fallout?

Israel's finest soldiers had been flying for several hours before the
assault helicopters reached their target - the uranium enrichment plant at
Natanz, in southern Iran. Most of the men from the Shaldag battalion were
dressed in the uniform of the Iranian Pasdaran militia, while others wore
Israeli army kit and carried the standard issue M4A1 carbine rifle fitted
with Trijicon Reflex sights.

As the helicopters dropped low over the desert, the commandos adjusted their
night vision equipment. At the back of one craft two large dogs from the
Oketz unit strained against tightly held leashes. Close by were packs of
explosives that would be strapped to them.

As the choppers landed several miles from the target, the soldiers spilt out
and ran to lorries hidden by Mossad agents. The Oketz men strapped the bombs
to the dogs.

As the lorries approached a dimly lit installation minutes later, snipers
picked off seven guards at its entrance. The trucks thundered through the
gates and headed for the gas centrifuges used to generate weapons-grade
uranium.

The soldiers fanned out, shooting and planting explosives. The dogs were
sent down narrow tunnels leading deep into the bowels of the complex.

For about 10 minutes nothing happened. The lorries had cleared the plant
when a series of explosions was heard underground. Moments later, Israeli
F-15 jets screamed in, dropping bunker-busting bombs.

The attack proceeded flawlessly, with only one reservation. This was not the
real Natanz plant, just a mock-up in Israel's Negev desert.

For the past few months, elite Israeli commandos have been training for an
assault on Iran's nuclear facilities. One more full rehearsal has been
scheduled for next month, said senior Israeli intelligence sources last
week.

The news that Israel is planning unilateral action to end what it considers
an imminent Iranian nuclear threat comes as American and European diplomats
are announcing new initiatives for negotiation with Tehran.

Although publicly committed to the diplomatic effort, Israeli officials say
the "point of no return" will come later this year when they calculate Iran
will be in a position to start processing uranium. They say Ariel Sharon's
inner cabinet has decided to act alone if the impasse has not been broken.

"If all efforts to persuade Iran to drop its plans to produce nuclear
weapons should fail, the US administration will authorise Israel to attack,"
said one Israeli security source.

So in the tradition of Israeli military adventurism - the honour roll
includes the destruction of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and the
raid on Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976 - Jerusalem is preparing for another daring
strike.

It is a move which, if carried out, might scupper President George W Bush's
Middle East peace plans and unleash the full force of Iran's military might
against Israel and Jewish interests around the globe.

So what is really going on amid the barren emptiness of the Negev desert? Is
Israel really girding for battle? And how should America, Britain and the
rest of the world react?

IRAN'S nuclear future is under construction on a spit of land that juts into
the Gulf 150 miles east of Kuwait. The Bushehr nuclear site is the home to a
nearly completed Russian-built plant that will be capable of producing a
quarter of a ton of weapons- grade plutonium a year - enough, say nuclear
experts, to build 30 atomic bombs.

Tehran has insisted that Bushehr is intended solely for civilian
power-generating purposes but few western experts believe that. They point
to a string of other facilities around the country - some buried deep
underground in hardened bunkers - which they say adds up to a clandestine
weapons programme.

Some of these locations are known to the International Atomic Energy Agency
and to western intelligence. They include a uranium mining facility at
Saghand; a plant at nearby Ardekan for preparing yellowcake, the first step
to nuclear fuel; and the Natanz enrichment facility that is the chief focus
of Israeli concern.

To these can be added up to a dozen more sites whose exact function remains
uncertain. "You do not have to be an expert to realise that almost all those
activities have little practical value for any kind of civil programme,"
said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon analyst at the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Almost all of them have
applications to a nuclear weapons programme."

The prospect that Iran's fundamentalist rulers might one day get their hands
on any kind of nuclear bomb is anathema to Israel.

"The preservation of a nuclear monopoly in the Middle East is the
cornerstone of Israel's security policy," says John Pike, a weapons
specialist with Globalsecurity.org. "Iran is behind most of Israel's
torments."

US military officials describe Israel as a "one bomb country" - small enough
to be destroyed by a single nuclear strike. As the domed reactor of Bushehr
has risen steadily, Israeli officials have warned they will not tolerate
"atomic ayatollahs" pointing nuclear missiles at Jerusalem.

There are significant differences among nuclear experts over how long it
might take Tehran to build its first useable bomb, but most agree the
Iranians are within a year of completing facilities that would begin weapons
production. The risk of delaying a military strike, they say, is that once
the Bushehr reactors start up, their destruction might cause an
environmental catastrophe on a par with the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986.

Israel is not alone in its fear of a nuclear Iran. US officials believe Iran's
main purpose in obtaining atomic capability is to confirm its status as a
regional power and to deter the Americans from what the Iranians regard as
adventurism.

Equally worrying for the West is the threat that nuclear materials might
fall into the hands of Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups.

For much of the past four years, the United States and Europe have been
divided over how to tackle the threat. Britain, France and Germany have led
a diplomatic drive to persuade Iran to abandon its weapons programmes. Last
year Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, but the
so-called EU-3 group has made little headway in persuading Tehran to
renounce its weapons ambitions.

However, to the chagrin of America's neoconservatives, the diplomatic
process is continuing. The announcement last week of new, US-backed
incentives for Iran - including civilian aircraft parts and support for
Iranian membership of the World Trade Organisation - is designed to break
the impasse by peaceful means. If Iran fails to respond, the issue is
expected to go to the UN security council later this year where it is likely
to become deadlocked, freeing Israel to take unilateral action.

ISRAEL was not always so worried about Iran's nuclear programme. In the
mid-1970s, Israeli scientists arrived at the Amirabad research centre in
Tehran to help with laser enrichment of uranium. But that was another age,
when the Shah sat on the Peacock throne and Israeli El Al flights were
welcomed twice a week to Tehran.

Today the Israelis are forced to look from the outside in. Officials said
that for more than a year, Israeli special forces have been operating a
listening post close to the Iranian border in Iraqi Kurdistan.

It is also said to have deployed intelligence-gathering submarines in the
Gulf and sent special forces on spying missions. The Israeli Ofek-6 spy
satellite - previously used to monitor Saddam Hussein's Iraq - has also been
moved to an Iranian orbit.
Unlike Osirak, the Israelis are said this time to be co-ordinating with
American forces. They have no choice. Any air-launched attack on Iran would
send Israeli warplanes over Turkey and close to Iraqi airspace, currently
controlled by the Pentagon.
Both Washington and Jerusalem know that whoever carries out any attack, the
world will see it as a joint conspiracy.

It is equally clear that a number of hurdles stand in the way. Jerusalem
must prepare for retaliatory assaults, either by Iranian-supplied missiles
based in Lebanon or by Iranian backed terrorists.

Above all, they must strike the right target. Both British and American
intelligence officials have confirmed that the whereabouts of all key
Iranian facilities remains unknown.

"Yes, of course you can do a bit of bombing," said a senior Washington
official. "But are you sure you can hit everything? No. And when you've done
it, what's the reaction? The Iranians close ranks, there's international
uproar and they've still got their weapons programme. What did you achieve
by this?" Not the least of the reasons Bush has become so accommodating to
European diplomacy is that the Pentagon has told him it can't be sure it has
located the entire Iranian nuclear structure. "There isn't a military option
at the moment," the Washington official added. By leaking details of its
attack plans, Israel may be trying to put pressure on Bush amid concerns
that the US is going "soft" on Iran in the interests of transatlantic
harmony. Some analysts believe that if Washington concludes an Israeli
attack is inevitable, US forces will be obliged to act in the hope of saving
the Middle East peace process.

While the Israelis are less concerned about the broader peace process, many
recognise that an attack only makes sense if it removes the Iranian threat.

On a recent Friday, a party was held on a remote Israeli kibbutz. Disco
music was playing and a couple of dozen athletic young men were quaffing
beers. No women were present.

The men were F-15 pilots from Israeli elite 69 squadron. They were enjoying
a break before yet another rehearsal of an attack on Natanz. "We are ready,"
said their commander, Brigadier General Shkedi.

It may be a difficult, even foolhardy mission. But Israel has shown before
that it will not be deterred if it concludes that its existence is
threatened.