Science

New York Times Interactive Media: Evidence on Iran's Nuclear Ambitions 

U.S. and Israeli officials confirmed to Newsweek, the military aid package includes the long-delayed delivery of 55 powerful GBU-28 Hard Target Perpetrators, better known as bunker-buster bombs. It also includes a network of proposed radar sites—some located in Arab neighbors designed to help Israel repel a missile attack, as well as joint military exercises and regular national-security consultations.

"What is unique in the Obama administration is their decision that in spite of the disagreements on the political level, the military and intelligence relationship which benefits both sides will not be spoiled by the political tension," says Amos Yadlin, former head of intelligence for the Israeli military. He declined to discuss any secret military cooperation. Given Israel's track record of pre-emptive bombing strikes to destroy nuclear sites in neighbouring nations and Iran's ambitious and suspicious nuclear program, the American bunker-busters may increase the chance of another Middle East war. Iran's unpredictable and bellicose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed to wipe Israel off the map. Iran continues to defy international sanctions with a clandestine nuclear program. Meanwhile, Mr. Netanyahu now has the means to carry out his threat that "Iran will not acquire nuclear arms, and this implies everything necessary to carry this out."

The bunker-busters will fit nicely on Israeli's top fighter-bomber, the F-15. Dropped from up to a dozen kilometres away, the needle-nosed, 2.5-tonne bomb 'dives" to its target, correcting its course so precisely as it plunges that it will fly down a ventilation stack or slice through six metres of concrete or 30 metres of dirt before exploding with colossal force. That's hardly the sort of thing used against the rabbit's warren of sub-surface tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle small arms and rockets into Gaza from the Egyptian Sinai near the Canada Gates. 

The bunker-buster bombs, and Mr. Obama's staunchly pro-Israeli stance last week at the United Nations where he vowed to block a Palestinian bid for recognition, have buoyed his approval ratings in Israel. Last spring, when he dared voice a return to "1967 lines" as the basis for peace, barely 12 per cent of Israelis regarded him as "pro-Israel." Pollsters recorded it at 54 per cent this week. Israel has its own – undeclared and therefore illegal under international law – nuclear arsenal which its western friends mostly ignore as they decry and denounce the outlawed efforts of Muslim states – including Pakistan and Iran – to either build or add to their stockpiles of nuclear warheads. Israel also has twice launched pre-emptive and devastating air strikes to destroy Arab nuclear reactors before they could produce weapons-grade bomb stock. In 1981, a daring long-distance strike destroyed an Iraqi reactor, ending Saddam Hussein's pursuit of nuclear weapons. In 2007, Israeli warplanes bombed a Syrian reactor of North Korean design. Striking Iran, both further away and further along the nuclear-weapons development path and with widely dispersed and deeply-buried sites, would be more challenging militarily. The bunker-busters may be a hammer Israel can't use unless it has the tacit approval of Washington. It's not clear if Mr. Obama retained the right to approve any use of the bunker-busters.

As reported by Eli Lake, the senior national security correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast on September 29, 2011, Josh Block, the former chief spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee explained: "In some ways the U.S.-Israel security relationship continues to get stronger with each new administration, but this administration, in airing private disputes and sometimes publicly distancing itself from Israel, has encouraged Israel's adversaries to pursue their hostile aims against the Jewish state." Obama's poll numbers among U.S. Jews have plummeted from 83 percent at the start of his presidency to 54 percent this month. Furthermore, Eli Lake reports that "on the one hand, there is deep and increasing military support from Obama to Israel. On the other hand, despite all the military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries, political distrust lingers. Perhaps at bottom it stems from Obama's public rebukes of the building of Israeli homes in East Jerusalem. No matter what his gifts to the leadership, he is still seen as no friend of Israel's."

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