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Iran's Nuclear Sites Tough Targets

By Eric Rosenberg, Hearst Newspapers, January 29, 2005

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/01/29/a5.nat.nukesites.0129.html

WASHINGTON - Although Vice President Dick Cheney signaled that the Bush administration would approve any preemptive Israeli attack on Iran's suspected nuclear weapons facilities, such a raid would prove far more difficult than Israel's demolition bombing of Iraq's nuclear complex in 1981.

Iraq's nuclear program was concentrated in an above-ground location easily spotted by the Israeli bomber pilots, but Iran's nuclear operations are dispersed throughout that country, with some key centers hidden underground. Iran is believed to have as many as 20 nuclear-related facilities in a nation with a larger land mass than Alaska. x While many countries condemned the 1981 Israeli attack, the successful bombing is now widely credited with inflicting a devastating setback to Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions.

Anthony Cordesman, a military expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan research organization, says there's no comparison between Iraq in 1981 and Iran in 2005.

``The Israelis had complete intelligence on the reactor in Iraq and the target was highly vulnerable,'' Cordesman said. ``In Iran, there are many facilities and there are serious underground facilities, which are very hard to destroy.''

Taking a lesson from the 1981 strike, Iran has dispersed its many nuclear-related centers so that ``it's not clear that destroying one would have any significant effect,'' Cordesman added. x Nuclear warheads can be made either with plutonium or enriched uranium, known as U-235. Enriched uranium is produced either through gaseous diffusion or systems of centrifuges.

Iran has chosen the centrifuge method, a move that David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said helps conceal their program. x By contrast, Iraq used a huge reactor to produce plutonium for its planned weapons.

Underscoring how easy it is to hide centrifuges, Albright said, ``I could set up a uranium centrifuge in my basement.''

Iran admits to having ongoing nuclear research, but contends that the goal of its program is to produce electricity rather than atomic weapons. The CIA says Iran is lying.

Cheney raised the option of a preemptive strike by Israel against Iran's nuclear facilities in a Jan. 20 interview on MSNBC's ``Imus in the Morning,'' when he gave his scarcely concealed blessing for an Israeli-led attack against Iran.

``If, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had a significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards,'' Cheney said.

Iranian leaders responded with a warning that they would retaliate.

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