Sunday, October 4, 2009
T-Minus ?? And Counting to Iran N-Strike
UPDATE 05 October 2009: Debkafile reports that the Chiefs-of-Staff for the United States, France and Israel held a secret meeting in Normandy, France yesterday to discuss the newly emergent military situation in the Middle East. According to the Debka report, "The three army leaders met to review the new military conditions emerging in the Middle East following the understanding reached between Washington and Moscow for scrapping US plans to install missile shield systems in East Europe. Russia is assuming a major role in the region with the full support of the Obama administration, part of its plan for a new diplomatic-military front against Iran composed of the US, Russia and Middle East nations."
UPDATE 30 September 2009: There's other information that has been circulating about the work being done in Iran to produce indigenous nuclear warheads. I studied multiple-sourced reports on this warhead issue over the past couple of days, then today in continuing that track I came across this report from The Financial Times: "Iran ‘has secret nuclear arms plan’"
The intelligence services of both France and Germany agree with their British cousins. Iran has been working on its nuclear warhead program for the past five years. This really puts the lie to the 2007 DNI National Intelligence Estimate, and that was a publication most intelligent folks immediately regarded as rubbish.
Here are the details as I currently understand them. The Defense Ministry of the Islamic Republic of Iran has within its structure an organization known as "Research Center for Explosions and Impact, also known by the Persian language acronym "METFAZ." METFAZ HQ is located in the Fars section of eastern Tehran. Two other facilities exist to the east and southeast of the Iranian capital. The first is in a village named Sanjarian (or Shah-jarian?). This facility is were the research, production and testing (computer simulation?) of the warheads occurs. The other facility is located in the town of Parchin. This is where the warhead initiator explosives are mixed and tested. Warhead design, missile delivery system and fissile core - all three of the primary indigenous ingredients are in progress. It appears as though the IDF has its work cut out for it.
UPDATE 28 September 2009: According to a report published yesterday by Express.co.uk, the government of Saudi Arabia “certainly approves” the use of its airspace by the Israel Defense Forces to attack Iranian nuclear installations.
Concurrently, Iranian military exercises featured test launches of the Tondar-69 (variant of the Chicom CSS-8), Fateh-110, and Zelzal short-range missiles. These missiles are estimated to have ranges of 60, 120 and 250 miles respectively. Thus one key aspect of Iran's expected retaliation for an Israeli strike would include selected targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Test firing of Iran's 1,200-mile range missiles (Shahab-3/Qadr-F1 and Sejjil) occured this morning. IRGC "war games" continue.
26 September 2009: Well, it won't be long now. Israel's much rumored strike against Iranian nuclear facilities has entered its final countdown. While the precise timing of an Israeli pre-emptive strike would never be revealed here, a very good assessment would hold that F-16I 'Sufa' ('Storm') and other Israeli strike packages are likely to go 'wheels-up' within 90 days - assuming of course that Yom Kippur passes without incident.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock...
