Potential attack on Iran nuclear sites would accomplish little, report says

[jpak]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/08/iran-nuclear.html

Could the Bush administration or Israel accomplish anything with a surprise attack on the heart of what the United States contends is an Iranian nuclear weapons center?

Probably not, a Washington think tank -- and former U.N. weapons inspector -- contend, in a detailed report that has quietly cast a skeptical eye on a central focus of U.S. foreign policy and national security attention.

It is not an idle question. It continues to dog President Bush, with critics expressing the fear that he is determined to attack Iran before leaving office.

The little-noticed study published Thursday by the Institute for Science and International Security cast doubt on comparisons between potential attacks on Iran's Natanz enrichment plants and its Esfahan uranium conversion facility, on the one hand, and, on the other, the surgical strikes by Israel on a clandestine Syrian nuclear reactor in September 2007 and Iraq's Osirak reactor in June 1981. Those attacks set back efforts to produce a plutonium bomb by several years, the report noted.

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[ladjf]

1. There may be over 70 Iranian nuclear sites. If true, they would be

difficult to find and hit.