History, We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ History

The BBC reports on a study by a British think tank: Report warns against Iran attack

The Oxford Research Group report is written by nuclear scientist and arms expert Frank Barnaby.

“If Iran is moving towards a nuclear weapons capacity it is doing so relatively slowly, most estimates put it at least five years away,” he says.

Mr Barnaby adds that an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities “would almost certainly lead to a fast-track programme to develop a small number of nuclear devices as quickly as possible”.

He says it “would be a bit like deciding to build a car from spare parts instead of building the entire car factory”.

The BBC then commits an act of blatant journalism, by assigning Gordon Corera , a security correspondent, to look at the claims in Iran: Can a military strike work?

In June 1981, eight Israeli fighter jets took only 90 seconds to destroy Iraq’s Osirak reactor in an audacious bombing raid. It is sometimes cited as a precedent for a US or Israeli (or joint) attack on Iran, but is it really a useful parallel?

[snip]
But did the Osirak raid stop – or even significantly slow down – the Iraqi nuclear programme?

The evidence is not conclusive. In terms of intent, the raid did not stop Saddam Hussein, it only forced him to change tactics for achieving his goal of a nuclear bomb and also intensify his work.

So, we only really have this attack on Saddam to look at, but the 1981 attack didn’t stop nuclear development, and Saddam had all of his “eggs in one basket”, a single, unhardened project.

The Iranians are well aware of what happened to Iraq’s reactor and have dispersed their program, putting much of it in underground bunkers. Part of the problem the IAEA inspectors have in assessing the Iran program is that there is no way of knowing if they have seen all of it. Given what happened in Iraq, it is unlikely that Iraq would be totally forthcoming.

Essentially, if the US or Israel attacks Iran, we will be stuck with $100 to $300 per barrel oil, economic collapse, and very possibly Iran joining the “nuclear club” in half the time of the current program, if such a program exists.

For those who just woke up: Saddam was unable to prove that he didn’t have WMDs and was attacked. We now know he didn’t. How does Iran prove it doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program? How would you prove you don’t have a unicorn?