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

[Morton K. Brussel]

  I agree with Stuart's 'ugh".

This "study", one suspects, was done with the backing of the Bush  
administration, the CIA, Israeli authorities and other amoral war  
hawks. It is far from a neutral study, assuming as it does that the  
Iranians are intent on producing nuclear weaponry, which must be  
destroyed in the interests of Israel. Its tone is sympathetic to  
Israel, antagonistic to Iran.  It tacitly encourages an attack on  
Iran, and does not discuss, upon my perusal, the response of Iran to  
an attack.

On the other hand, it may not all be wrong.

--mkb

On May 7, 2007, at 10:26 AM, Stuart Levy wrote:

> 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
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