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Consequences of Bombing Iran |
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Did it work in Iraq?
On Crossfire two Iraqi scientists described the result of the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Iraqi reactor Osirak. They destroyed the reactor, but Saddam increased his funding of nuclear weapons ten fold and greatly accelerated the program.
...actually, what Israel [did] is that it got out the immediate danger out of the way. But it created a much larger danger in the longer range. What happened is that Saddam ordered us - we were 400... scientists and technologists running the program. And when they bombed that reactor out, we had also invested $400 million. And the French reactor and the associated plans were from Italy. When they bombed it out we became 7,000 with a $10 billion investment for a secret, much larger underground program to make bomb material by enriching uranium. We dropped the reactor out totally, which was the plutonium for making nuclear weapons, and went directly into enriching uranium.... They [Israel] estimated we'd make 7kg of plutonium a year, which is enough for one bomb. And they get scared and bombed it out. Actually it was much less than this, and it would have taken a much longer time. But the program we built later in secret would make six bombs a year. —Khidir Hamza
(Khidir Hamza and Imad Khadduri, Crossfire transcript, CNN, February 7, 2003)
Given the current mindset in Iran, we have every reason to expect the same kind of response from Tehran.
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http://zfacts.com/p/291.html | 01/18/12 07:20 GMT
Modified: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 01:48:14 GMT
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