The British media appears to be softening us up for an attack on Iran, says robert fox |
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Suddenly the smell of Britons being prepared for an attack on Iran is all pervasive. On Radio 4 this week, the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson hosted a bizarre 45-minute round-table on how Britain would react if America and Israel went ahead and bombed Iran. Broadcast on Wednesday and repeated tomorrow, it was pitched as a discussion of hypothetical 'what ifs'.
The next morning, Anatole Kaletsky, of the Times, wrote a column about Blair and US-Israeli-Saudi plans to trash Iran. Yesterday's Spectator went further. In its cover story, it states that Israel is planning to use nuclear strikes to stop the Iranian nuclear industry. It is not a question of if but when Israel will launch its missiles and bombers, we are told.
What is going on? The facts as far as we know them - based on inquiry, investigation
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| Attacks on nuclear sites in Iran would cause ‘hundreds of thousands of casualties’ |
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and real sources - are these:
The Israelis, according to the strategic think tank at Tel Aviv University, stated last month that the only way to stop Iran getting operational nuclear weapons was by military strike. There are only four or five months left in which this might be done successfully, and if the US won't help Israel to do it, Israel will go it alone. US Vice-President Dick Cheney is signed up to this, and is trying to persuade George Bush.
The US military has drawn up the war plans for a strike on Iran, according to British intelligence sources. However, the chiefs of all three US armed services have told Bush not to do it. "The Americans have no serious human intelligence on the ground in Iran," a senior British commander told me recently.
As I reported on November 1, the British Army Board looked at intelligence assessments of Israeli proposals to attack nuclear sites in Iran. The briefing paper estimated this would "cause hundreds of thousands of casualties".
The Israelis and their supporters who
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