The meeting was held in the monolithic Ministry of Defense building in Whitehall and was chaired by General Sir Michael Walker, the chief of Britain’s defense staff. The Foreign Office team was led by William Ehrman, director general of the defense office, and David Landman, head of the nuclear proliferation department. Both had played an important role in bringing Libya out of the political wilderness. John Scarlett and Eliza Manningham-Buller were on hand to brief the meeting on Israel’s position. For the first time the Pentagon battle plans for an all-out assault on Iran were on the table. Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles would be launched from U.S. navy ships and submarines in the Gulf to target Iran’s air defense systems at the nuclear installations. The updated Tomahawks had an onboard facility that allowed them to be reprogrammed while in-flight to attack an alternative target once the initial one was destroyed. Each missile also had a “loitering” capability over a target area to provide damage assessment through its on-board TV camera. U.S. Air Force B2 stealth bombers, each equipped with eight 4,500-pound bunker-busting bombs, would fly from Diego Garcia, the isolated U.S. navy base in the Indian Ocean, the Whiteman USAF base in Missouri, and the USAF base at Fairford in Gloucestershire, England. Each meter-long bomb of hardened steel could penetrate six meters of concrete. There would be no ground-force follow-up attacks.
The meeting attendees then went on to discuss the risks associated with such an attack. The details were subsequently obtained by the author and are published here for the first time. The meeting attendees were told that an American-led attack could trigger “devastating reprisals” against the 8,500 British troops based in Iraq and the 4,000 British soldiers who had arrived in Afghanistan. Ehrman reminded them that both countries had strong religious and political ties to Iran. Walker predicted the attack might be preceded by Washington reorganizing its plan to withdraw a substantial number of troops from Iraq. It would also certainly lead to confrontation with China and Russia—whose support would lead to Iran cutting off its oil supplies to the West. Scarlett cited Meir Dagan’s view that the offensive on Iran would see a dramatic increase in suicide bomber attacks against Israel. The intelligence chief added that MI6 intelligence could provide no guarantee that an aerial assault on Iran would destroy the eight identified targets the Pentagon designated. These targets were:
• Saghand, a mining operation set to begin later this year, yielding fifty-to-sixty tons of uranium annually.
• Ardkan, where ore is purified to produce uranium ore concentrate known as yellowcake.
• Gehine, a mining and milling facility.
• Isfahan, where yellowcake is cleansed of impurities and converted to uranium hexafluoride gas.
• Natanz, an enrichment site, which can be used to produce weapons-grade uranium.
• Tehran, a research reactor and radioactive waste storage facility.
• Bushehr, a Russian-built light water reactor.
• Arak, a heavy water research reactor.
• Anarak, a nuclear waste storage site.
No date had yet been fixed for an air attack, but if Iran continued its bellicose attitude and ignored demands made by the UN, the Bush administration could launch military action in 2007, but possibly not later than the run-up to Bush’s final year in office in 2008. The present mission plans were two-phased. Cruise missiles would destroy defenses around the targets, then B2 stealth bombers would strike their plants with bunker-busting bombs. The Pentagon estimated the total mission time in the target areas at probably eight hours. Submarines would simultaneously launch rockets.
The meeting studied the latest intelligence on Iran’s current ballistic missile capability: a total of eighty-five S-300 air defense missiles. Provided by China, they would be effective against U.S. fighter-bombers, less so against the multi-defense systems of the Tactical Tomahawks. There were also forty X-55 cruise missiles, each with an estimated range of over one thousand miles. They were based close to the border with Turkmenistan. Less than thirty Shabtai-3 rockets provided by China and based in sites in southern Iran bringing them well within range of Israel. The Shahab-4 rocket was currently being developed near Natanz, south of Tehran. Present intelligence estimates said it would not come on line until 2008. Each would have a range of eight thousand miles—able to strike against anywhere in Europe and the United States. The present missiles could be adapted to fire from Iran’s twenty-five missile crafts and its three frigates. None, however, could be launched from Iran’s air force of two hundred aging aircraft: Tomcats, MIG-29 Fulcum, and Phantoms. Iran’s five hundred thousand army of regulars and conscripts were poorly led and trained. Most of their equipment comes from the former Soviet Union.
