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The Sunday Telegraph in London, reported that U.S. military strategists are drawing up plans for an attack on Iran as a last resort to stop the Islamic republic from developing nuclear weapons.

In a front-page dispatch from Washington, it said US central and strategic command planners were “identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation”.

The planners are reporting to the office of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with a view to having a military option if diplomatic efforts fail to put the brakes on Iran’s suspected bid to make a nuclear bomb.

“This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment,” the newspaper quoted a senior Pentagon adviser as saying. “This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months.”

Iran’s outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also unleashed a fresh verbal assault against Israel repeating his view that the Holocaust was a “myth” and predicting “Zionists” would soon be destroyed.

“Iran has continued its nuclear drive within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but if we see that you want to deprive us of our right using these regulations, know that the people will revise their policy,” Ahmadinejad said on Saturday.

Earlier this month, the IAEA referred Iran to the United Nations Security Council after the oil-rich nation resumed its uranium enrichment programme. SA abstained in the vote.

The treaty is the cornerstone of the global battle against the spread of nuclear weapons, prohibiting the development of the bomb and subjecting its signatories to IAEA inspections.

Iran is under intense pressure to agree to a moratorium on nuclear fuel work that can be extended to make weapons, but insists it only wants to generate electricity and argues that its nuclear ambitions are therefore entirely legal.

Although foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said that Iran was “still committed” to the treaty, he nevertheless repeated the warning that this position could soon change.

The IAEA left a one-month window for diplomacy, for Iran to return to a full suspension of enrichment-related work and cooperate more with IAEA inspectors. So far Iran has done the opposite, setting the scene for a major showdown.

Iran’s parliament speaker Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel said nuclear research would be resumed immediately.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/world.aspx?ID=BD4A154025