Iran Wants Enriched Uranium; Israel Wants Bunker-Busting Bombs

Despite a severely worded suggestion by the UN that they not bother, the theocrats in Iran decided they needed the Bomb and announced to the world that they had begun the process of enriching raw uranium for “peaceful purposes.” Meanwhile, Israel revealed that the US was going to sell it 500 “bunker buster” bombs, ideal for hitting research facilities deep underground. These developments combined are a far bigger threat to peace in the Middle East than they are alone.

Iran, of course, has no intention of using this nuclear material peacefully. Enriched uranium doesn’t work well in medicine (unlike other radioactive substances), and Iran floats on a sea of oil, so electricity generation is not going to occur either. Iran has learned from recent history, though, that nations with nukes, or the potential for them, don’t get invaded by the US Marines. Nations that don’t, well . . . .

Israel does have security issues and has since its birth. However, the main problem is with the Palestinians and Hamas in Lebanon. Neither has hardened bunkers that would require the satellite-targeted BLU-109’s 2,000 pound payload. According to Robert Hewson, editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons, in a Reuters interview, Israel makes its own bunker busters, but the America makes them better.

Ages ago, Iraq had a nuclear materials testing reactor built by the French, which the Iranians unsuccessfully attacked eight days into its war with Iraq in 1980. The following June, the Israelis decided to take it out, and flew across Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq to do so. Hitting before the uranium-235 was put into the reactor, there was no fall-out of a chemical kind. Diplomatically, the fall-out continues.

If Iran does proceed with its Bomb program (and it has nothing to lose if it does), and if Israel has weapons capable to stopping it, there is little reason not to think a crisis of global importance would ensue. If Israel actually were to use its American-provided weapons, the result may be a war that no one can afford to fight. But that has never stopped mankind before. And yet, no one seems to have the sense to stop the merry-go-round the world is riding.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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