[Peace-discuss] "MIT eggheads plan Israeli airstrike on Iran nuke factories"

[Stuart Levy]

Ugh.

>From The Register, which is mostly an information-technology-and-sometimes-gossip
web site:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/04/frustrated_mit_risk_loving_eggheads/

"A pair of postgraduate students at MIT have produced a detailed assessment of
the Israeli Air Force's ability to destroy Iran's potential nuclear weapon
manufacturing plants.

Whitney Raas and Austin Long, PhD candidates in Nuclear Engineering and
Political Science respectively, published
   http://web.mit.edu/ssp/Publications/working_papers/wp_06-1.pdf
  "Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities"
last month. The title alludes to the famous Israeli air raid on Saddam Hussein's
Osirak reactor in 1981, which destroyed the facility and denied Iraq any chance
to build nuclear weapons in the 1980s.

Raas and Long suggest that a "strike package" of 50 US-made F-15 and F-16 jets -
a considerable proportion of the IAF's current strength - could potentially
wreck Iran's ability to build nukes, using conventional weapons already in the
Israeli inventory."

  [...]

(Absent from this analysis, at least the article's summary of it,
is discussion of what other consequences could follow from such an attack.
Though it does look far enough ahead to consider that
   "The two authors are surely correct to assume that Israel could
   never get away with more than a single lightning raid;
   international outrage would surely prohibit any sustained campaign."
Well, maybe.)

Nice to know our intellectual capital is being put to such productive use.

   Stuart