Military action would not stop Iran's nuclear program but could be a last resort to delay any quest for an atomic bomb, the mastermind of Israel's 1981 air strike on the Iraqi reactor at Osiraq said yesterday. While Israel and its US ally have not excluded the option of attacking Iran if all diplomatic efforts to curb its nuclear capability fail, independent experts believe the Islamic republic's facilities are too dispersed and fortified to be eliminated militarily.
But David Ivry, who planned the Osiraq raid as then chief of the Israeli air force, argued against thinking in all-out terms. "You cannot eliminate an idea, a national will. But you can delay progress on a nuclear program with the appropriate military action," Ivry told Reuters. "That is a valuable objective in itself." |