The Israelis have plans to conduct lightning strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities that include the use of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons, the Times of London reports this morning. The revelation has many predicting a bloodbath in the Middle East, but the Times leaves it unclear whether this is an actual plan or merely a training exercise:

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.

This sounds more like the script to Star Wars IV & VI than a military plan being readied for imminent use. It presumes that the Israelis could travel unimpeded to Iran, refueling along the lengthy flight while avoiding hostile airspace, which would force them to take a circuitous route. They would then drop bunker-busters on all Iranian nuclear facilities close to simultaneously, while fending off the weak but still extant Iranian air force. Their pilots would then drop low-yield nukes directly into the holes made by the first bombs while the targets will likely be obscured by smoke and dust in order to destroy their underground facilities.

Even more unlikely is the notion, floated by the Times, that the revelation of these plans will force the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons. The difficulties in such a mission would be more likely to convince the Iranians that the US has completely given up on the military option for ourselves. After all, we could run the same mission but use carrier task forces to do it, which would make the flights almost impossible to detect in time. We could also use surface-ship missiles to conduct the second phase of the missiles, assuming we could detect the holes made by the bunker-busters in real time. If the Israelis are the only nation willing to do this, the Iranians could pretty easily defend against it, which will make them more arrogant and not less.

The Israelis have denied the entire story this morning (via It Shines For All):

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said it would not respond to the claim. "We don't respond to publications in the Sunday Times," said Miri Eisin, Olmert's spokeswoman.

Israeli Minister of Strategic Threats Avigdor Lieberman also declined to comment on the report.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev denied the report and said that "the focus of the Israeli activity today is to give full support to diplomatic actions" and the implementation of a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt enrichment.

Of course they would deny this, even if true; it would be an attack on a sovereign nation and just the plans could present Iran with a casus belli. Does anyone see Ehud Olmert as the man most likely to launch such a war?

More likely this is a training exercise to determine the feasibility of such an attack. Perhaps the difficulties could be overcome, but they seem near insurmountable. Any attack by air will show up on the radars of several nations very unfriendly to Israel well before the bombers cross over into Iranian airspace. Those nations would consider the overflight a hostile act in itself, and would likely respond militarily even before Israeli pilots could lock onto their targets. The low-percentage nature of the plan's final stage would convince most that the entire mission would best remain a curious academic exercise and not a serious strategy for handling Iranian nuclear ambitions.

UPDATE: Thanks to Andy McCarthy for The Corner link!

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