Tunnels of Iran's nuclear ambitions

NY Times:

Last September, when Iran’s uranium enrichment plant buried inside a mountain near the holy city of Qum was revealed, the episode cast light on a wider pattern: Over the past decade, Iran has quietly hidden an increasingly large part of its atomic complex in networks of tunnels and bunkers across the country.

In doing so, American government and private experts say, Iran has achieved a double purpose. Not only has it shielded its infrastructure from military attack in warrens of dense rock, but it has further obscured the scale and nature of its notoriously opaque nuclear effort. The discovery of the Qum plant only heightened fears about other undeclared sites.

Now, with the passing of President Obama’s year-end deadline for diplomatic progress, that cloak of invisibility has emerged as something of a stealth weapon, complicating the West’s military and geopolitical calculus.

The Obama administration says it is hoping to take advantage of domestic political unrest and disarray in Iran’s nuclear program to press for a regimen of strong and immediate new sanctions. But a crucial factor behind that push for nonmilitary solutions, some analysts say, is Iran’s tunneling — what Tehran calls its strategy of “passive defense.”

Indeed, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has repeatedly discounted the possibility of a military strike, saying that it would only slow Iran’s nuclear ambitions by one to three years while driving the program further underground.

Some analysts say that Israel, which has taken the hardest line on Iran, may be especially hampered, given its less formidable military and intelligence abilities.

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I dont think Israel's problem is a lack of intelligence capabilities. What is needed to destroy Iran's nuclear ambitions is more than an attack. It will take a sustain series of attacks over a matter of weeks, not days. Isrweal is probably limited to a one shot operation.

If I were planning an attack against Iran to halt their nuclear program, I would not limit the attack to their nuke facilities. I would attack their ability to make war by destroying the infrastructure Iran needs to project its terrorist operations as well as their conventional military hardware and manufacturing. Once that was destroyed I would start hammering all of their nuclear facilities relentlessly.

The idea is to make it clear to Iran that their ambitions are hopeless. That is the only way they will ever stop. If we just attack their nukes, then Gates is right about merely delay9ing. We have to break their will and the way you do that is by making them realize that they cannot win.

After all, that is what Iran is trying to convince us of with their tunnels.