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US Plan to Attack Iran with Nuclear Weapons, Devised Under Bush
By Sherwood Ross
Global Research, October 20, 2012

Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-prepares-protracted-afghanistan-occupation/5308984

U.S. plans to attack Iran with a mix of nuclear and conventional weapons have been in readiness since June, 2005, a distinguished authority on international affairs says.

“Confirmed by military documents as well as official statements, both the U.S. and Israel contemplate the use of nuclear weapons directed against Iran,” writes University of Ottawa Professor (Emeritus) Michel Chossudovsky, in a recently released book entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War”

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The plans were formulated in 2004.  The previous year, Congress gave the Pentagon the green light to use tactical nukes in conventional war theatres such as the Middle East and Central Asia, allocating $6 billion in 2004 alone to create this new generation of “defensive” weapons.

“In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney ordered USSTRATCOM (Strategic Command) to draft a ‘contingency plan’ that included “a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons,” Chossudovsky writes. The plan went beyond even the Pentagon’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review(NPR)’s “contingency plans” for an offensive “first strike use” of nuclear weapons against Russia and China as well as Iran and North Korea.

The 2005 plan identified more than 450 strategic targets in Iran, including numerous suspect nuclear-weapons-program development sites. The plan, incredibly, was rationalized on a second 9/11 type attack on the US that Cheney believed Iran would allegedly support!

“President Obama has largely endorsed the doctrine of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons formulated by the previous administration,” Chossudovsky writes in his new book, “Towards a World War III Scenario” (Global Research). His Administration “has also intimated it will use nukes in the event of an Iran response to an Israeli attack on Iran.”

Chossudovsky points out, “The new nuclear doctrine turns concepts and realities upside down. It not only denies the devastating impacts of nuclear weapons, it states, in no uncertain terms, that nuclear weapons are ‘safe’ and their use in the battlefield will ensure ‘minimal collateral damage and reduce the probability of escalation.’ The issue of radioactive fallout is not even acknowledged with regard to tactical nuclear weapons, neither is the issue of ‘Nuclear Winter’.”

“What is unfolding [in relation to Iran] is the outright legitimization of war in the name of an illusive notion of global security. America’s mini-nukes, with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb, are upheld as a ‘humanitarian’ bomb, whereas Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons are branded as an indisputable threat to global security,” Chossudovsky writes.

He points out that a U.S.-Israeli strike against Iran would probably not be limited to Iran’s nuclear facilities but likely would be “an all-out air attack on both military and civilian infrastructure, transport systems, factories and public buildings.”

Employed would be “the entire gamut of new advanced weapons systems, including electro-magnetic  weapons and environmental modification techniques (ENMOD),” Chossudovsky writes.

He notes that the U.S. has stepped up its military shipments to Israel, its NATO allies, and to countries bordering Iran. Israel in 2004 took shipment of the first of 500 U.S.-made BLU 109 “bunker buster” bombs, and the U.S. has supplied thermonuclear bombs to Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey, and Great Britain. Turkey alone, a partner in the U.S. anti-Iran coalition, has 90 thermonuclear B61 bombs at its Incirlik nuclear air base.

“It is not Iran and North Korea which are a threat to global security by the United States of America and Israel,” he adds. What’s more, Western European governments have joined the bandwagon and “have endorsed the U.S.-led military initiative against Iran.”

He goes on to say, “At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable—a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread in terms of radioactive fallout over a large part of the Middle East.”

It may also be noted the U.S. currently has several, nuclear-armed carrier task forces in waters near Iran and has built more than 40 military bases in the countries surrounding Iran. The U.S. reportedly has 20,000 nuclear bombs available to use and Israel reportedly has another 200, whereas Iran is not known to have one. U.S. military spending of $700 billion a year, moreover, is 100 times the rate of Iran’s $7 billion annual military outlay.

Further Information interviews and media contact: Sherwood Ross, 305-205-8281; [email protected].

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Editorial Reviews

Professor Chossudovsky’s hard-hitting and compelling book explains why and how we must immediately undertake a concerted and committed campaign to head off this impending cataclysmic demise of the human race and planet Earth. This book is required reading for everyone in the peace movement around the world.
–Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law

In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.
–Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of U.S. wars since 9-11 against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of “freedom and democracy”.
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

About the Author

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website.

He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005).

He has taught as Visiting Professor at universities in Western Europe, South East Asia and Latin America, acted as an adviser to governments of developing countries and as a consultant for the several international organizations.

Prof. Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

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Product Details
File Size: 254 KB
Print Length: 127 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0973714751
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Global Research Publishers (March 15, 2012)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Language: English
ASIN: B00875T0DI
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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