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US prepares military blitz against Iran’s N-sites

* UK paper says prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain
* Pentagon planners believe raids can hold back Iran’s nuclear programme

LAHORE: Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites as a “last resort” to block Tehran’s efforts to develop an atomic bomb, the Sunday Telegraph reported on Friday.

The British newspaper reported that US Central Command and Strategic Command planners had been identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation. “This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment,” the newspapers quoted a senior Pentagon adviser as saying. “This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months.”

Possible conflict: The report said the prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain, which feared that an attack would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and may not cripple Tehran’s nuclear programme. It said the steady flow of disclosures about Iran’s secret nuclear operations and the anti-Israeli threats by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had prompted the fresh assessment of military options by Washington. The most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000lb of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices, the newspaper reported.

Attack, a good defence: Reportedly, Tehran has dispersed its nuclear plants, burying some deep underground, and has recently increased its air defences, but Pentagon planners believe that the raids could seriously set back Iran’s nuclear programme.

Iran was last weekend reported to the United Nations Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency for its banned nuclear activities. Tehran reacted by announcing that it would resume full-scale uranium enrichment – producing material that could arm nuclear devices. President George W Bush has refused to rule out military action and reaffirmed last weekend that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “will not be tolerated”. daily times monitor

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