Israel on Sunday dismissed a report saying Tel Aviv prepared plans to destroy Iranian nuclear sites with a tactical nuclear strike. The report appeared in a British weekly, but Israel termed it as as ”absurd.”
The Sunday Times quoted several Israeli military sources as saying that two Israeli air force squadrons are training to use “bunker-busting” bombs for a single strike.
“This is absurd information coming from a newspaper that has already in the past distinguished itself with sensationalist headlines that in the end amounted to nothing,” an Israeli official told AFP. “To think that we will launch an atomic attack against Iran, and on top of that that we would reveal it in advance to a foreign newspaper is doubly ridiculous,” the official added.
The Sunday Times said the plans involved sending conventional, laser-guided missiles to open up “tunnels” in the targets before “mini-nukes” with a force the equivalent of one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb are fired in. “As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” one of the unnamed sources was quoted as saying.
On its part, Iran warned that it would respond to any attack in a way that would leave its enemy regretting that it had made such a move. “Any action against the Islamic republic will not go without a response and the aggressor would regret the action very quickly,” foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.
He described the report as “proof of the weakness of the enemy and will have no effect on the determination of the Islamic republic to continue its (nuclear) activities.”
