The chatter is deafening, the dogs of war are gathering, and the White house is pumping up the rhetoric. Iran must be stopped!! Stopped from becoming a nuclear power? Sure, that was the opening verse to the song, but now, it's just the chorus. The new mantra is that they must be stopped from killing our troops in Iraq. As the hearings on the surge in Iraq are unfolding this very day, Iran is now being portrayed as a major source of weapons and explosives and even sending trainers within Iraq. One would have a difficult task counting the number of times Iran is mentioned in just the first session of these hearings.

         And, how did they go from a dangerous nuclear threat, to killing our troops on the ground? Spin. Suddenly, the same intelligence that brought us WMDs, and nuclear weapons in Iraq, is bringing us the Iran explosives pipeline. U.S. military and intelligence officials claim that they have seized shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border. They also claim to have connected these shipments directly to Iran's elite "Revolutionary Guard".

         Even before this "new" threat from Iran was fully hyped by the Bush administration, the BBC had revealed that the attack on Iran was in the works as early as February in an article titled: "US 'Iran attack plans revealed". It started with the ominous words "US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned."

         The key to understanding that this will be more than just a series of bombings meant to cripple the Iranian military, is that this attack will be from the air, not the ground. And, no doubt, most of the bombs used for this attack will be of the depleted uranium "penetrator" or nuclear "bunker buster" type. The everlasting killing power of depleted uranium as true "weapons of mass destruction" is just beginning to surface in the troops, and civilians, exposed to their permanent killing power. The use of DU weapons already has the potential to reach "Doomsday Weapon" status; bunker busters are even worse.

         Bunker-busting nuclear weapons are also known as earth-penetrating weapons and weapons designed to penetrate into soil, rock, or concrete to deliver a nuclear warhead to a target. The Union of Concerned Scientists has stated that the depth required to contain fallout from a nuclear blast would have to be over 300 feet. They also concluded that it is improbable such nuclear penetrators could burrow so deeply, making it unlikely the blast would be completely contained. The Federation of American Scientists has stated that "No earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the 15 kiloton Hiroshima weapon. The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout."

         One percent of the explosive yield of the Hiroshima bomb is 0.15 kilotons. The smallest quoted bunker buster yield is twice that amount, or 0.3 kilotons, and they are claiming to have bunker busters with yields as high 340 kilotons, or over 20 Hiroshima’s.

The current reports are claiming that as many as 1200 to 1500 specific targets are in the crosshairs of the Pentagon. We know that many are nuclear in origin, which will certainly up the ante on the potential devastation. What happens when you bomb a nuke, with a nuke? In other words, the U.S. is planning on a campaign of "small-scale" nuclear wars for over a thousand locations in an area smaller than the State of Alaska, and a population over a hundred times that of Alaska.

         This will be like increasing the population of Alaska tenfold, then adding the entire populations of California and Texas, and blitzing over a thousand targets in that area with the largest, most destructive weapons in the U.S. arsenal. How many innocent people will die immediately, or in the long-term, in Iran? How many of these targets are close to, or in, civilian areas? How many of these targets are downwind from civilian areas? How many of these targets are close to the borders of, or directly in the wind patterns of, other countries? Remember, as you consider this potential horror, that the uranium dispersed by such an attack will be deadly for billions of years.

         How can this be justified when several reliable sources say the charge that the alleged explosives are being "supplied" by Iran is presumptive, at best? Even the claim that Iran "could" become a nuclear threat, is known to be at least two decades into the future. Why has no one pointed out that, at the beginning of the Iraq occupation, the U.S. allowed almost every armory in Iraq to be looted completely, thus allowing a flood of high-powered explosives and weapons into the general population?

         This fact alone brings into question the very need for any other country to provide any explosives or weapons to forces in Iraq. Before the attack, the Bush administration knew, clearly, that Iraq was riddled with sprawling weapons caches, which weapons inspectors for the U.S. said "covered hundreds of square miles...at unguarded sites across Iraq." Nothing was done to secure these sites until well after the occupation began and almost all the sites had been looted. Over 750,000 pounds of the most powerful of conventional explosives, including HMX, RDX, and PETN, which are used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads, and detonate nuclear weapons, were freely looted from a single facility called Al Qaqaa.

         If only the explosives from this single facility, which contained 1,100 structures for the manufacture and storage of powerful explosives, were the ones used against the occupation forces in Iraq, an amazing equation emerges. If those explosives were used against the coalition troops at the rate of 200 pounds per day, for 365 days a year, they would last for ten years, with a reserve left over. And, that is the explosive power of only one facility out of hundreds. In May, 2004, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

         Millions of handguns, rifles, rocket launchers, and every imaginable type of weapon can be added to that unbelievable arsenal, which is now spread all over Iraq, and anywhere in any other country it could be concealed within the Middle East. Add to this, the hundreds of thousands of weapons recently missing from the inventory that the U.S. supplied Iraqi forces, after the armories were already sacked. Where did those weapons and that ammunition end up? The question then becomes, who is actually responsible for this seemingly, unending flow of explosives, which is killing U.S. troops and that the U.S. is now claiming Iran is supplying? Why would any nation send weapons and explosives to an area already awash in thousands of tons of explosives, millions of conventional and sophisticated weapons and an over-abundance of ammunition for those weapons, and massive amounts of equipment and materials to manufacture even more weapons and ammunition?

         Is the U.S. about to inflict a nuclear holocaust on Iran as punishment for the alleged crime of supplying explosives and weapons, for which the U.S., through its own admitted neglect, may be ultimately responsible? Why have none of the facts presented in this article even been considered in the justification for such a massive, destructive, and dangerous expansion of the conflict in the Middle East? Attacking a weak Afghanistan was no great effort. Removing a hated dictator in a weakened Iraq, with little resistance, was relatively simple, although the Iraqi population has suffered greatly and remaining has proved to be a deadly and costly mistake for all involved. Iraq will not be such a cake walk.

         The hard facts are eye-opening. Iran's military was called the Middle East's most powerful by General John Abizaid, Chief of United States Central Command. Iran has a navy and air force with a combined total of 70,000 personnel, although both those forces will probably be crippled immediately. However, the Islamic Republic of Iran Army and Revolutionary Guards have a combined total of almost 500,000 personnel. There is also a paramilitary volunteer force, which is called the Basij, which includes about 90,000 active-duty, uniformed members, up to 300,000 reservists, and a further 11 million men and women, who have been trained and would be mobilized in this potential attack.

         The country has been under threat from U.S. forces for decades, has been aware of the current threat now looming, and is well-prepared for optimizing its survivability against everything it knows the U.S. could throw against it. The U.S. may knock out the bulk of Iran's mechanized forces and thousands of its soldiers, but it would certainly awaken and incite a sleeping giant of millions of well-prepared and well-armed civilian soldiers. What would be the reaction from, and toward, the millions of Iranians living abroad, including the hundreds of thousands in the U.S.? How will the Iraqi population, which is predominantly Shia Muslim, as is the majority of the Iranian population, and other Shia Muslims in the Middle East respond to an attack on Shia Muslims in Iran?

         Iran is not isolated from its neighbors, but an important and powerful economic, political, and military force in the Middle East. Syria, for instance, cannot be ignored in the equation, considering it recently entered into a mutual aid pact with Iran dealing with co-operation and mutual aid during scenarios of military confrontation with the West. In August of this year, it was reported that Iran was establishing a missile defense shield in Syria, with its navy, air force, and 500,000-man army. How will the U.S. keep Syria from becoming immediately involved?

         Turkmenistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Turkey, as well as occupied Iraq and Afghanistan all share common borders with Iran. The nations of the European Union are Iran's main trading partners, along with China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia, not to mention all the trade conducted within the Middle East. How will this effect these border nations and trading partners and how will they react? Then, of course, there is the drastic effect that removing the fourth highest ranking oil producer in the world from the pipeline will have on oil prices. The negative possibilities are endless, unpredictable, and seem to be completely out of what little debate exists.

         Unfortunately, the administration is promoting it, the Pentagon is planning it, the Legislative branch is supporting it, the mainstream media is embracing it, and the public is generally clueless about it. The U.S. is moving naval and air forces into the region, the charges against Iran will certainly increase, few will protest, and suddenly the U.S. will be bombing Iran back into the Stone Age. And, if the world lasts long enough, there will be an Iran War investigative hearing sometime in the future, which will determine that Iran never sent weapons and explosives to Iraq, and had no intention of building a nuclear arsenal. But, surely, they will declare that the attack on Iran was justified to free the people from evil leaders, and bring peace, democracy, and capitalism to yet another fortunate target of a U.S. freedom crusade, run amuck.

Patrick Cooke is an independent researcher and journalist in Berkeley, California

Reference Links:

Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear Bunker Buster -Wikipedia

Depleted Uranium - World Health Organization

BBC News - US 'Iran Attack Plans' Revealed

Iraq: Coalition Ignored Warnings on Weapons Stocks

Explosives were Looted After Iraq Invasion

Other Reference Links