Chossudovsky's New Book:
America's "Contingency Plan" to Attack Iran with Nuclear Weapons
Review of "Towards a World War III Scenario. The Dangers of Nuclear War"
By Sherwood Ross
Global Research, April 24, 2012
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29977
U.S.
plans to attack Iran with a mix of nuclear and conventional weapons
have been in readiness since June, 2005, according to Michel
Chossudovsky. a distinguished authority on international affairs.
"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 professor
Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on
Globalization in Montreal.
The plans were formulated in
2004. The previous year, Congress gave the Pentagon the green light to
use thermo-nuclear weapons in conventional war theaters in the Middle
East and Central Asia, allocating $6 billion in 2004 alone to create the
new generation of "defensive" tactical nuclear weapons or
"mini-nukes".
"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 the terms of reference outlined in the Pentagon’s 2001
Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which called for a "preemptive" "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 alleged
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: The Dangers of Nuclear War"
(Global Research, 2012). 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 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-metric 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.
