Iran “will respond with full force to any aggression or even threats in a way that will demolish the aggressors from within,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told students at a Teheran military college. Khamenei said the message was directed at Iran’s enemies, “especially America and its stooges and the Zionist regime (Israel).”

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta considers military strike would lead to serious impact.

In Washington, Panetta said a military strike on Iran would have a “serious impact” on the Middle East and possibly on American forces in the region, without seriously disrupting Iran’s nuclear program.

“You’ve got to be careful of unintended consequences here,” Mr. Panetta said, reiterating the Obama administration’s view that diplomatic pressure and international sanctions were the preferred courses of action.

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) citing “credible” evidence said this week that Iran has been engaged in projects and experiments relevant to development of nuclear weapons.

At the United Nations on Thursday, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, pleaded for restraint on all sides, apparently in reaction to the speculation that Israel may attack suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.

A United Nations spokesman, Martin Nesirky, said that Mr. Ban had reiterated “his belief that a negotiated rather than a military solution is the only way to resolve this issue,” Reuters reported.

The United States, France and Britain have said the Iranians must answer the questions raised in the United Nations report or face further penalties, beyond the four rounds of sanctions already imposed by the United Nations Security Council.

But the prospects for further Security Council sanctions are bleak at best because of objections by Russia and China. All five powers are veto-wielding members of the Security Council. By Evelyn Lin, Taiwan News

In its latest report on Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency  says the research includes computer models that could only be used to develop a nuclear bomb trigger.

The BBC  says this is the IAEA’s toughest report on Iran to date.

Tehran condemned the findings as politically motivated.

“This report is unbalanced, unprofessional and prepared with political motivation and under political pressure by mostly the United States,” said Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the IAEA.

It was “a repetition of old claims which were proven baseless by Iran in a precise 117-page response, ” he added.

Iran says its nuclear programme is solely to generate civilian power. The Nation

After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, 1250 of the workers called in to deal with it later killed themselves out of fear of the consequences for themselves or their children.

An extensive study of the health aftermath of the disaster was carried out in 2005 by the Chernobyl Forum, made up of scientists from Europe, the UN, the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the International Labor Organisation and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The forum’s task was to study all available epidemiological data to measure the levels of death, disease and economic damage caused by Chernobyl.

About 57 people, mainly power-plant staff and emergency workers, died in the explosions or within months from burns or the severe radiation poisoning they suffered on the night of the April 26, 1986, disaster.

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Most emergency workers and people living in the contaminated areas received relatively low doses of radiation compared to natural background levels.

However, 350,000 people moved out of affected areas found relocation traumatic.

A paralysing sense of fatalism among those even lightly affected led them to accept exaggerated fears about the likely damage to their health.

Fears of birth defects prompted between 100,000 and 200,000 women in Western Europe to have abortions in the years after the accident.

The study concluded that about 4000 people, most of whom were children or adolescents at the time of the disaster and who lived in areas with the highest radiation levels, would eventually die from cancer caused by radiation.

Of 6.8 million other people living further from the power station and who received much lower doses, a further 5000 might be killed by that radiation.

Cancer caused about a quarter of all deaths in Europe and Chernobyl was likely to account for 0.01 per cent of those cancer deaths.

The 1979 Three Mile Island radiation leak and partial meltdown triggered a spontaneous evacuation of the surrounding area of Pennsylvania but studies indicate the radiation hurt no one. Brendan Nicholson, The Australian

Lithuania agreed to close the plant as part of a deal to joining the European Union in 2004.

The plant was built in the 1980 and is considered by many to be unsafe since it shares design flaws with the Chernobyl unit that exploded in 1986. The Ignalina plant’s first reactor closed in December of that year.

Engineers at Lithuania’s Soviet-built nuclear power plant began shutting down a Soviet-build nuclear reactor Thursday as part of an agreement with the European Union, which considers the Chernobyl-type machine unsafe.

The shutdown has been greeted with anguish across Lithuania, as the recession-hit country will lose a source of cheap electricity and be forced to import more expensive energy.

The Ignalina nuclear plant in the town of Visaginas is scheduled to cease producing electricity at one hour before midnight local time (2100 GMT; 4 p.m. EDT).

Its last working reactor – ordered closed by the EU because it is considered too similar to the one that exploded at Chernobyl in 1986 – boasts a capacity of 1,320 megawatts, making it one of the largest nuclear reactors in the world.

Lithuania – one of the two most nuclear-energy dependent nations along with France – had been hoping that the EU would allow it to keep the plant open for another two to three years, but Brussels, which demanded the reactor’s shutdown as part of Lithuania’s membership agreement, flatly refused.

“We are keeping our word to our European partners,” Energy Minister Arvydas Sekmokas said during a visit to the plant on New Year’s Eve.

In April 1986, an earlier, smaller version of the RBMK reactor at Ignalina exploded in Chernobyl, Ukraine, casting a fallout cloud over a wide swathe of Europe. It remains the world’s worst civilian nuclear catastrophe.

According to the shutdown plan, output at the Ignalina unit will be reduced from 1,320 megawatts to 700 beginning at 8 p.m. local time (1800 GMT; 1 p.m. EDT) and switched off completely at 11 p.m (2100 GMT; 4 p.m. EDT).

“We will witness an unprecedented event today as Lithuania becomes the first country in the world to abandon nuclear energy completely,” said Viktor Shevaldin, the plant’s chief. “Only Armenia knows what it means to lose this power – it had to shut down its reactor after an earthquake but reopened it after six years.”

Residents in Visaginas, a town of 25,000, are frustrated that Lithuania will lose the cheap energy source.

“I don’t understand it. Why throw away a good thing that could still serve for years?” said Aleksei Tichomirov, a 47-year-old engineer who moved to Lithuania in the 1980s when the plant was built.

“This is my last day at work. There is no job in Visaginas for people like me,” he said.

The Ignalina plant supplied over 70 percent of Lithuania’s electricity needs – only France receives more of its kilowatt needs from nuclear power.

The Baltic nation of 3.4 million people will cover the shortfall by buying power on the open market from Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

By 2013, Lithuania hopes to build a new natural-gas power plant, but that would not be enough to meet its own energy needs.

Many Lithuanians are worried that they will become dependent on Russian gas supplies, which they fear may stop without warning given Russia’s snap decisions in the past to shut off supplies to Ukraine.

However, Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius does not share the view.

“Lithuania could have done its homework better preparing for the closure, but it won’t be left without energy next year. I believe our country, together with its Baltic neighbors, will have an energy market similar to the Nordic countries and other EU regions,” he told Lithuanian Radio. The Wichita Eagle

Medvedev said the new missiles would be developed in full accordance with arms agreements made with the United States. “Of course, we will develop new systems, including delivery systems, that is, missiles,” Medvedev said in an end-of-year interview with state-controlled television channels.

“This process will be continued, and our nuclear shield will always be efficient and sufficient to protect our national interests,” Medvedev said.

The Kremlin chief said Russia and the United States were close to a new deal on reducing vast Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons, adding that he had “trustworthy relations” with US President Barack Obama. Zeenews

He urged Ahmadinejad to “continue contacts with interested countries for a just and balanced solution on the nuclear issue in Iran”.

In his weekly radio address earlier, Lula said engaging Iran instead of isolating it was the way to push for peace and stability in the Middle East.

“It doesn’t help isolating Iran,” he said. “It’s important that someone sits down with Iran, talks with Iran and tries to establish some balance so that the Middle East can return to a certain sense of normalcy.”

Lula, who honed his negotiating skills as a union leader, says a new tactic is needed with the Iranians.

“I told President [Barack] Obama, I told President [Nicolas] Sarkozy, I told [German] Chancellor Angela Merkel that we will not get good things out of Iran if we corner them. You need to create space to talk,” he said last month.

During his radio show, Lula also proposed a football game in March pitting Brazil’s famed national team against a team comprising Israelis and Palestinians.

Security council ‘failure’

Ahmadinejad, for his part, supported Brazil’s bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Brazil is to take one of the 10 non-permanent seats – those without the power of veto – in 2010 and 2011.

“We support a reformed UN Security Council and for Brazil to have a permanent seat,” Ahmadinejad said.

He said the council “has failed over the past 60 years because of the veto power of a small number of countries, a source of insecurity for several countries in the world”.

The first visit by Ahmadinejad to Brazil provides Lula an opportunity to boost the international political clout of South America’s largest nation, analysts said.

But Brazilian opposition politicians criticised it, citing concern over Iran’s nuclear programme as its human rights record, as well as Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust.

Demonstrations against the visit were staged in Brasilia and other major cities across the country.

Lucia Newman, Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor, said: “He [Lula] has faced criticism not only from the Republicans in Washington but also in Brazil itself.

“They [critics] believe he has gone too far; that he’s isolating Brazil by going to the side of countries that are considered by some to be, as we know, on the axis of evil.”

Lula defended the visit, saying any progress on the nuclear standoff with Iran and on the stalled Middle East peace process required dialogue with all parties involved.

Ahmadinejad’s trip follows visits in the past two weeks by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Shimon Peres, his Israeli counterpart, who called on Lula to use Brazil’s influence to help curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Iran’s nuclear programme, which it says is intended for civilian use, has drawn criticism from Western countries which suspect Tehran is seeking to build a nuclear bomb.

World powers have urged Iran to reconsider its rejection of a UN-drafted deal aimed at a peaceful resolution to its contested nuclear programme.

The deal would have seen Tehran shipping its low-grade enriched uranium to Russia and France where it could be processed to be used as fuel in Iran’s medical-purpose reactor.

Instead, Iran wants a direct swap of low-enriched uranium for processed nuclear fuel, taking place on Iranian soil.

Ahmadinejad’s visit comes as the military back home engages in large-scale war games centred on protecting Iran’s nuclear facilities from attack. The Iranian leader is set to visit allies in Bolivia and Venezuela next to shore up more South American support. Al Jazeera

It came complete with a dismissive sound bite – comparing Iran’s foes to a mosquito – a bit of boasting about Iran’s prestige and a touch of self-analysis. Iran’s president said Sunday that Tehran doesn’t trust the West to keep its promises.

Added together, it helps explain Iran’s zigzag reactions last week to a UN-drafted nuclear pact, and why Iran is in no hurry to cut a deal.

For days, Iran had hinted that it would back the essential element of the UN offer – to send about 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium stockpile out of the country – but wanted some changes to the formula.

Those changes turned out to be more like a full counter proposal.

The response Thursday – as described by diplomats – essentially seeks to keep the uranium in Iran. That could be an ultimate deal breaker, because the West wants to pare down Iran’s store of low-enriched uranium to a point where it cannot make a nuclear warhead – at least temporarily.

But no one is ready to call it quits yet. Washington and its allies are hoping Iran softens its position. On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters in Malaysia that bargaining was still possible.

Asked if Tehran has rejected the deal, Mottaki said: “No.”

This may be welcome news in Western capitals. Yet many will see it as suspiciously like another stalling tactic.

Iran’s negotiations with the West have been a master class in slo-mo diplomacy. Since uranium enrichment was restarted three years ago, Iran has been able to draw out a showdown by offering just enough to the West when the heat became uncomfortable.

“Iran believes time is on their side for now,” said Mustafa Alani, a regional analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

That is because there’s little in the UN plan that Iran likes and no serious domestic pressure for unpopular compromises. Standing firm, meanwhile, brings some immediate dividends.

Ahmadinejad and his hard-line allies can claim the high ground as defenders of Iran’s national dignity and strides in nuclear technology. It’s particularly tempting for Ahmadinejad, a rare opportunity to cross the political no man’s land after June’s disputed elections. Even his harshest opponents take pride in Iran’s nuclear accomplishments.

Ahmadinejad played this to full effect Sunday. In a posting on a government Web site, he was quoted as describing the nuclear negotiations as a match between Goliath Iran and an annoying insect.

“While enemies have used all their capacities … the Iranian nation is standing powerfully and (Iran’s foes) are like a mosquito,” he said.

He further scolded the West for what he called a history of broken promises. Iran, he said, “looks at the talks with no trust.”

The trust gap comes with a long back story. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran says it made a deal with France for a 10 percent stake in a nuclear plant and was expected to receive 50 tons of UF-6 gas, which can be turned into enriched uranium. But Iran claims it never received even a gram.

To Iranian leaders, that’s just another example of perceived Western bullying, which also include sanctions and a lack of pressure on Israel to open itself to international nuclear scrutiny.

Israel is widely considered to have nuclear arms, but has never publicly disclosed details – and has left open the option of military action to block Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

In the current context, Iranian authorities also raise worries about Iran’s self-sufficiency or of being at the mercy of the West for reactor fuel. Those are powerful themes inside Iran – making it unlikely that Iranian leaders would stoke such anxieties and then agree to the UN package.

Iran insists its nuclear program is only for research and energy production and has reportedly floated a counterproposal: to enrich uranium to reactor-ready strength at home with monitoring by the UN’s nuclear watchdog group.

But Western leaders are not biting on Iran’s Plan B.

On Friday, the European Union expressed “grave concern” about Iran’s nuclear program and “persistent failure to meet its international obligations.” In Washington, the reaction has been more muted, but President Barack Obama does not favour open-ended talks.

Congress also could give the White House new sanctions leverage, this time to penalize foreign firms that sell and ship refined petroleum products to Iran. That is perhaps Iran’s most vulnerable point. Right now, it must already import about 40 percent of its gasoline and other fuel products.

But there’s no sign of panic from Tehran. The country has ridden out US and international sanctions for years and can look to its economic ties with China and Russia as major buffers.

For the moment, it appears Iran instead is banking on the gravitas of the groundbreaking talks that opened new channels with the United States.

The West may be reluctant to step away from a level of outreach that would be hard to recapture. Yet there is certainly an expiration date on Washington’s patience.

“The president’s time is not unlimited,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday. Indian Express

State media reported that four members of the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the underground nuclear facility, which is being built into the side of a mountain near Qum, about 150 kilometres southwest of Tehran.

The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China demanded unfettered access to the facility after Iran disclosed its existence last month in a letter to IAEA.

At the time, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN that the country did not keep its second enrichment facility secret and that Iran was working within the guidelines of the UN nuclear watchdog.

But he dodged a question about whether Iran had enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. Ahmadinejad claimed the rules required that the agency be informed of any new enrichment facility six months before it became operational.

The new facility wouldn’t be working for 18 months, he said.

But the IAEA said Iran was obliged to notify the agency when it begins designing such facilities. Uranium enrichment is a process that can be used to make fuel or nuclear weapons.

No results from Sunday’s inspection are expected until the team leaves the country. The four members from IAEA are expected to spend three days in Iran.

They are expected to compare Iran’s engineering plans with the actual layout of the plant, interview employees and take environmental samples to check for the presence of nuclear materials.

The small-scale site is meant to house no more than 3,000 centrifuges — much less than the estimated 8,000 machines at Iran’s other uranium conversion facility, Natanz, south of Tehran.

A recent satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe and GeoEye shows a well-fortified facility built into a mountain about 32 kilometres northeast of Qum, with ventilation shafts and a nearby surface-to-air missile site, according to defence consultancy IHS Jane’s, which did the analysis of the imagery. The image was taken in September. CBC News

Israel’s political and military leaders have long made it clear that they are considering taking decisive military action if Iran continues to develop its nuclear program. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the United Nations this week that “the most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

Reporting by the International Atomic Energy Agency and other sources has made it clear that whether or not Iran ties all of its efforts into a formal nuclear weapons program, it has acquired all of the elements necessary to make and deliver such weapons. Just Friday, Iran confirmed that it has been developing a second uranium-enrichment facility on a military base near Qom, doing little to dispel the long-standing concerns of Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the U.S. that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Iran has acquired North Korean and other nuclear weapons design data through sources like the sales network once led by the former head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, A. Q. Khan. Iran has all of the technology and production and manufacturing capabilities needed for fission weapons. It has acquired the technology to make the explosives needed for a gun or implosion device, the triggering components, and the neutron initiator and reflectors. It has experimented with machine uranium and plutonium processing. It has put massive resources into a medium-range missile program that has the range payload to carry nuclear weapons and that makes no sense with conventional warheads. It has also worked on nuclear weapons designs for missile warheads. These capabilities are dispersed in many facilities in many cities and remote areas, and often into many buildings in each facility—each of which would have to be a target in an Israeli military strike.

It is far from certain that such action would be met with success. An Israeli strike on Iran would be far more challenging than the Israeli strike that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981. An effective Israeli nuclear strike may not be possible, yet a regional nuclear arms race is a game that Iran can start, but cannot possibly win. Anyone who meets regularly with senior Israeli officials, officers and experts knows that Israel is considering military options, but considering them carefully and with an understanding that they pose serious problems and risks.

One of the fundamental problems dogging Israel, especially concerning short-ranged fighters and fighter-bombers, is distance. Iran’s potential targets are between 950 and 1,400 miles from Israel, the far margin of the ranges Israeli fighters can reach, even with aerial refueling. Israel would be hard-pressed to destroy all of Iran’s best-known targets. What’s more, Iran has had years in which to build up covert facilities, disperse elements of its nuclear and missile programs, and develop options for recovering from such an attack.

At best, such action would delay Iran’s nuclear buildup. It is more likely to provoke the country into accelerating its plans. Either way, Israel would have to contend with the fact that it has consistently had a “red light” from both the Bush and Obama administrations opposing such strikes. Any strike that overflew Arab territory or attacked a fellow Islamic state would stir the ire of neighboring Arab states, as well as Russia, China and several European states.

This might not stop Israel. Hardly a week goes by without another warning from senior Israeli officials that a military strike is possible, and that Israel cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, even though no nation has indicated it would support such action. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to threaten Israel and to deny its right to exist. At the same time, President Barack Obama is clearly committed to pursuing diplomatic options, his new initiatives and a U.N. resolution on nuclear arms control and counterproliferation, and working with our European allies, China and Russia to impose sanctions as a substitute for the use of force.

Mr. Ahmadinejad keeps denying that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and tries to defend Iran from both support for sanctions and any form of attack by saying that Iran will negotiate over its peaceful use of nuclear power. He offered some form of dialogue with the U.S. during his visit to the U.N. this week. While French President Nicolas Sarkozy denounced Iran’s continued lack of response to the Security Council this week, and said its statements would “wipe a U.N. member state off the map,” no nation has yet indicated it would support Israeli military action.

Most analyses of a possible Israeli attack focus on only three of Iran’s most visible facilities: its centrifuge facilities at Natanz, its light water nuclear power reactor near Bushehr, and a heavy water reactor at Arak it could use to produce plutonium. They are all some 950 to 1,000 miles from Israel. Each of these three targets differs sharply in terms of the near-term risk it poses to Israel and its vulnerability.

The Arak facility is partially sheltered, but it does not yet have a reactor vessel and evidently will not have one until 2011. Arak will not pose a tangible threat for at least several years. The key problem Israel would face is that it would virtually have to strike it as part of any strike on the other targets, because it cannot risk waiting and being unable to carry out another set of strikes for political reasons. It also could then face an Iran with much better air defenses, much better long-range missile forces, and at least some uranium weapons.

Bushehr is a nuclear power reactor along Iran’s southwestern coast in the Gulf. It is not yet operational, although it may be fueled late this year. It would take some time before it could be used to produce plutonium, and any Iranian effort to use its fuel rods for such a purpose would be easy to detect and lead Iran into an immediate political confrontation with the United Nations and other states. Bushehr also is being built and fueled by Russia—which so far has been anything but supportive of an Israeli strike and which might react to any attack by making major new arms shipments to Iran.

The centrifuge facility at Natanz is a different story. It is underground and deeply sheltered, and is defended by modern short-range Russian TOR-M surface-to-air missiles. It also, however, is the most important target Israel can fully characterize. Both Israeli and outside experts estimate that it will produce enough low enriched uranium for Iran to be able to be used in building two fission nuclear weapons by some point in 2010—although such material would have to be enriched far more to provide weapons-grade U-235.

Israel has fighters, refueling tankers and precision-guided air-to-ground weapons to strike at all of these targets—even if it flies the long-distance routes needed to avoid the most critical air defenses in neighboring Arab states. It is also far from clear that any Arab air force would risk engaging Israeli fighters. Syria, after all, did not attempt to engage Israeli fighters when they attacked the reactor being built in Syria.

In August 2003, the Israeli Air Force demonstrated the strategic capability to strike far-off targets such as Iran by flying three F-15 jets to Poland, 1,600 nautical miles away. Israel can launch and refuel two to three full squadrons of combat aircraft for a single set of strikes against Iran, and provide suitable refueling. Israel could also provide fighter escorts and has considerable electronic-warfare capability to suppress Iran’s aging air defenses. It might take losses to Iran’s fighters and surface-to-air missiles, but such losses would probably be limited.

Israel would, however, still face two critical problems. The first would be whether it can destroy a hardened underground facility like Natanz. The second is that a truly successful strike might have to hit far more targets over a much larger area than the three best-known sites. Iran has had years to build up covert and dispersed facilities, and is known to have dozens of other facilities associated with some aspect of its nuclear programs. Moreover, Israel would have to successfully strike at dozens of additional targets to do substantial damage to another key Iranian threat: its long-range missiles.

Experts sharply disagree as to whether the Israeli air force could do more than limited damage to the key Iranian facility at Natanz. Some feel it is too deeply underground and too hardened for Israel to have much impact. Others believe that it is more vulnerable than conventional wisdom has it, and Israel could use weapons like the GBU-28 earth-penetrating bombs it has received from the U.S. or its own penetrators, which may include a nuclear-armed variant, to permanently collapse the underground chambers.

No one knows what specialized weapons Israel may have developed on its own, but Israeli intelligence has probably given Israel good access to U.S., European, and Russian designs for more advanced weapons than the GBU-28. Therefore, the odds are that Israel can have a serious impact on Iran’s three most visible nuclear targets and possibly delay Iran’s efforts for several years.

The story is very different, however, when it comes to destroying the full range of Iranian capabilities. There are no meaningful unclassified estimates of Iran’s total mix of nuclear facilities, but known unclassified research, reactor, and centrifuge facilities number in the dozens. It became clear just this week that Iran managed to conceal the fact it was building a second underground facility for uranium enrichment near Qom, 100 miles southwest of Tehran, and that was designed to hold 3,000 centrifuges. Iran is developing at least four variants of its centrifuges, and the more recent designs have far more capacity than most of the ones installed at Natanz.

This makes it easier to conceal chains of centrifuges in a number of small, dispersed facilities and move material from one facility to another. Iran’s known centrifuge production facilities are scattered over large areas of Iran, and at least some are in Mashad in the far northeast of the country—far harder to reach than Arak, Bushehr and Natanz.

Many of Iran’s known facilities present the added problem that they are located among civilian facilities and peaceful nuclear-research activities—although Israel’s precision-strike capabilities may well be good enough to allow it to limit damage to nearby civilian facilities.

It is not clear that Israel can win this kind of “shell game.” It is doubtful that even the U.S. knows all the potential targets, and even more doubtful that any outside power can know what each detected Iranian facility currently does—and the extent to which each can hold dispersed centrifuge facilities that Iran could use instead of Natanz to produce weapons-grade uranium. As for the other elements of Iran’s nuclear programs, it has scattered throughout the country the technical and industrial facilities it could use to make the rest of fission nuclear weapons. The facilities can now be in too many places for an Israeli strike to destroy Iran’s capabilities.

Israel also faces limits on its military capabilities. Strong as Israeli forces are, they lack the scale, range and other capabilities to carry out the kind of massive strike the U.S. could launch. Israel does not have the density and quality of intelligence assets necessary to reliably assess the damage done to a wide range of small and disperse targets and to detect new Iranian efforts.

Israel has enough strike-attack aircraft and fighters in inventory to carry out a series of restrikes if Iran persisted in rebuilding, but it could not refuel a large-enough force, or provide enough intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities, to keep striking Iran at anything like the necessary scale. Moreover, Israel does not have enough forces to carry out a series of restrikes if Iran persisted in creating and rebuilding new facilities, and Arab states could not repeatedly standby and let Israel penetrate their air space. Israel might also have to deal with a Russia that would be far more willing to sell Iran advanced fighters and surface-to-air missiles if Israel attacked the Russian-built reactor at Bushehr.

These problems are why a number of senior Israeli intelligence experts and military officers feel that Israel should not strike Iran, although few would recommend that Israel avoid using the threat of such strikes to help U.S. and other diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to halt. For example, retired Brigadier General Shlomo Brom advocates, like a number of other Israeli experts, reliance on deterrence and Israel’s steadily improving missile defenses.

Any Israeli attack on an Iranian nuclear target would be a very complex operation in which a relatively large number of attack aircraft and support aircraft would participate. The conclusion is that Israel could attack only a few Iranian targets—not as part of a sustainable operation over time, but as a one-time surprise operation.

The alternatives, however, are not good for Israel, the U.S., Iran’s neighbors or Arab neighbors. Of course being attacked is not good for Iran. Israel could still strike, if only to try to buy a few added years of time. Iranian persistence in developing nuclear weapons could push the U.S. into launching its own strike on Iran—although either an Israeli or U.S. strike might be used by Iran’s hardliners to justify an all-out nuclear arms race. Further, it is far from clear that friendly Arab Gulf states would allow the U.S. to use bases on their soil for the kind of massive strike and follow-on restrikes that the U.S. would need to suppress Iran’s efforts on a lasting basis.

The broader problem for Iran, however, is that Israel will not wait passively as Iran develops a nuclear capability. Like several Arab states, Israel already is developing better missile and air defenses, and more-advanced forms of its Arrow ballistic missile defenses. There are reports that Israel is increasing the range-payload of its nuclear-armed missiles and is developing sea-based nuclear-armed cruise missiles for its submarines.

While Iran is larger than Israel, its population centers are so vulnerable to Israeli thermonuclear weapons that Israel already is a major “existential” threat to Iran. Moreover, provoking its Arab neighbors and Turkey into developing their nuclear capabilities, or the U.S. into offering them a nuclear umbrella targeted on Iran, could create additional threats, as well as make Iran’s neighbors even more dependent on the U.S. for their security. Iran’s search for nuclear-armed missiles may well unite its neighbors against it as well as create a major new nuclear threat to its survival. By Anthony H. Cordesman, Wall Street Journal.

“Our all requirement (of energy) will only be met by considering nuclear and non-conventional resources,” he said while releasing commemorative coins to mark the birth centenary of nuclear scientist Homi Bhabha.

Making a strong case for a major nuclear power programme with a long-term vision, Mukherjee said, “quality power is essential requirement (for growth)…Our conventional sources are not at all adequate to achieve the desired energy (output) in terms of electricity generation”.

Noting that coal resources are depleting and hydel power potential is limited, the Finance Minister said overexploitation of conventional resources are also raising environmental concerns.

Unlike the conventional sources of energy, he said, “nuclear energy is clean and self-alternating compared to fossil fuel”.

Recalling the contribution of Bhabha, Mukherjee said, he started his work at a time when nuclear science was in the stage of infancy and people were not sure what role it could play in economic development. Indian Express.