Source: Bloomberg
Obama administration officials are
escalating warnings that the U.S. could join Israel in attacking
Iran if the Islamic republic doesn’t dispel concerns that its
nuclear-research program is aimed at producing weapons.
Four days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
is scheduled to arrive in Washington, Air Force Chief of Staff
General Norton Schwartz told reporters the Joint Chiefs of Staff
have prepared military options to strike Iranian nuclear sites
in the event of a conflict.
“What we can do, you wouldn’t want to be in the area,”
Schwartz told reporters in Washington yesterday.
Pentagon officials said military options being prepared
start with providing aerial refueling for Israeli planes and
include attacking the pillars of the clerical regime, including
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite Qods Force,
regular Iranian military bases and the Ministry of Intelligence
and Security. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity
because Pentagon plans are classified.
“There’s no group in America more determined to prevent
Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon than the Joint Chiefs of
Staff,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Army General Martin Dempsey told
the House Budget Committee yesterday. “I can assure you of
that.”
Separately, unnamed U.S. officials told the Washington Post
that U.S. military planners are increasingly confident that
sustained attacks with the Air Force’s 30,000-pound (13,608
kilograms) “bunker-buster” bombs could put Iran’s deeply
buried uranium-enrichment plant at Fordo out of commission.
