United States: The United States has stepped up covert military operations inside Iran and is considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons in a possible air attack on the Islamic republic, according to a report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker today.
Hersh, who broke the story of prisoner abuse by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib, says the Bush administration has little faith in diplomacy to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear programme and believes that regime change in Tehran is the only way to prevent the country developing nuclear weapons.
"This is much more than a nuclear issue," one high-ranking US diplomat is quoted as saying. "That's just a rallying point and there is still time to fix it, but the administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next 10 years."
Current and former American military and intelligence officials told Hersh that air force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets and teams of US combat troops have been sent into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to make contact with ethnic-minority groups opposed to the government in Tehran.
Col Sam Gardiner, a military analyst who taught at the US National War College in the 1980s, told a security conference in Berlin last month that satellite photographs of Iran's known nuclear facilities suggested that an effective air strike would need to hit at least 400 targets.
"I don't think a US military planner would want to stop there. Iran probably has two chemical-production plants. We would hit those. We would want to hit the medium-range ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer to Iraq.
"There are 14 airfields with sheltered aircraft . . . We'd want to get rid of that threat. We would want to hit the assets that could be used to threaten Gulf shipping. That means targeting the cruise-missile sites and the Iranian diesel submarines . . .
"Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target even with penetrating weapons. The US will have to use special operations units," he said.
Hersh reports that a military plan presented to the White House and the Pentagon last year calls for the use of a nuclear "bunker-buster" weapon against Iran's underground sites, including the main centrifuge plant at Natanz, south of Tehran.
A former senior intelligence official told him that military planners believed that a nuclear strike, which could lead to radiation and years of contamination, represented the only way to be sure of destroying Iran's facilities.
"Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap. 'Decisive' is the key word of the air force's planning," the former intelligence officer said. "It's a tough decision, but we made it in Japan."
The US defence establishment is divided over an attack on Iran, with some senior officers apparently threatening to resign if a nuclear strike is ordered.
"There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries," a senior Pentagon official told Hersh.
Washington's public position on Iran is to support a European- led diplomatic effort to persuade Tehran to abandon plans to enrich uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons.
President George W. Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice have consistently said, however, that the use of military force remains an option.
In January, Mr Bush described a nuclear-armed Iran as "a grave threat to the security of the world" and identified the Islamic republic as the gravest potential threat to US security interests.
All Washington's major European allies, including Britain, oppose the use of force against Iran.
British foreign secretary Jack Straw restated his government's opposition to such an attack.
"The idea of a nuclear strike on Iran is completely nuts," he said.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that although military options, including nuclear strikes, are being considered against Iran, no attack is likely in the short term and US planners are not considering a land invasion at any stage.
Many senior officials in Washington fear that any military action against Iran could intensify anger against the US throughout the Muslim world, expose American forces in Iraq to even greater danger and provoke a wave of terrorist attacks in the West.
Some neo-conservatives who encouraged Mr Bush to invade Iraq, however, believe that the US could destroy Iran's nuclear capability relatively easily and that the administration has a moral obligation to do so.
Richard Perle, a prominent neo-conservative who is close to the Pentagon, told The Sunday Times yesterday that an attack on Iran could be over before anyone knew it had happened.
"The only question then would be what the Iranians might do in retaliation," he said.