Nuclear Bunker-Busters
americanfuture.typepad.com
By Marc Schulman on US Defense Policy
YESTERDAY: Hasan Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, confirmed that Iran was building a tunnel next to a nuclear facility in Isfahan without first informing the IAEA, said that "Constructing a tunnel is not a nuclear activity" and "It's not clear for us if we had to inform the IAEA of the tunnel construction at all," and, when asked if the tunnel was meant to protect nuclear equipment against airstrikes, said "Airstrikes won't be able to do anything against it."
TODAY: The New York Times, in an editorial opposing the funding of the Bush administration's plan to develop bunker busting nuclear weapons, says that
the events of the past two years - particularly the faulty to nonexistent intelligence on Iraq - provide further caution against providing Pentagon planners with new nuclear options for hit-and-miss stratagems.
and
merely hypothesizing their use against suspected targets in an unstable place like North Korea feeds anxiety about proliferation and threatens to end the "nuclear taboo" that has kept the world free of nuclear warfare since World War II.
and concludes that
A safer bet for the world would be to invest the money in improving precision-guided bombs and missiles with conventional warheads.
Safer? I guess that, in the Times' opinion, either Rowhani's claim is false, or his claim is real, but it's less dangerous to engage in a limited version of unilateral disarmament than it is to persuade the Iranians that, despite their best efforts, invulnerability can't be achieved. |
