ISRAEL:Israel has drafted plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment programme using tactical nuclear weapons and Israeli pilots are already training in Gibraltar for the mission, a British newspaper reported yesterday.
A spokesman for prime minister Ehud Olmert refused to comment on the report in the Sunday Times, but a foreign ministry spokesman denied it, saying Israel was committed to resolving the issue of the Iran nuclear issue via diplomacy.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to strike at an Iranian nuclear plant using "low-yield nuclear 'bunker-busters'", the report claimed, quoting "several" Israeli military sources.
The newspaper, which said Israeli pilots had recently flown to Gibraltar to train for the 2,000-mile trip to Iran and back, did not identify the sources.
According to the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would be used to smash open passages toward the targets and then "mini-nukes" would be fired into the plants, where they would explode underground, reducing the risk of radioactive fallout.
The plants mentioned are at Natanz, Isfahan and at a heavy water reactor at Arak.
While Israeli leaders have expressed a preference for a diplomatic way out of the showdown with Iran over its nuclear aspirations, they have not ruled out the possibility of a military strike.
Israelis are unnerved by the prospect of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for their country to be destroyed and who recently hosted a conference that questioned the Holocaust, having his finger on the nuclear button.
The head of Israel's Mossad spy agency, Meir Dagan, recently estimated that Iran would acquire nuclear weapons within three years, while deputy defence minister Ephraim Sneh warned that if the international community displayed sufficient will to curb Iran's nuclear drive, "then there will be no need to weigh other options" - a clear reference to the military alternative.
But some analysts question whether Israel, acting alone, has the ability to strike effectively at Iran's nuclear programme in the way it did when it knocked out the reactor Saddam Hussein had built in the Iraqi city of Osirak in 1981.
While a single, surprise strike by fighter jets was sufficient 26 years ago, the Iranians have learned from that event, spreading out their nuclear facilities and building them deep underground.
The Sunday Timesreport states that several installations "have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock". Israel would only resort to using tactical nukes, the report states, if the United States decided not to intervene militarily. Many observers believe US intervention in the case of Iran has become unlikely as the American military has become increasingly bogged down in Iraq.
Besides serving as a warning to Iran, details of a possible strike might have been leaked to the Sunday Times in a bid to spur the Americans and the rest of the international community into taking action against Tehran that goes way beyond the sanctions recently imposed by the UN.
Asked about the report, Miri Eisen, a spokesman for Mr Olmert, replied: "We don't comment on stories like this in the Sunday Times." Foreign ministery spokesman Mark Regev was more forthcoming: "The focus of the Israeli activity today is to give full support to diplomatic actions," he said. "If diplomacy succeeds, the problem can be solved peaceably."
Despite a recent slip of the tongue in which Mr Olmert seemed to admit that Israel possessed nuclear weapons, successive governments have for decades adopted a policy known as "nuclear ambiguity", neither denying nor confirming a nuclear weapons capability. According to foreign reports, Israel has some 200 nuclear warheads.
While Israeli leaders have stated that they will not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, some observers suggest that Tehran's surge toward an atomic bomb cannot be halted and that Israel will ultimately have no choice but to come to terms with a nuclear Iran. At that point, they say, Israel may well choose to discard "nuclear ambiguity" for a more open policy in the hope that this will deter Tehran.