Iran

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has claimed that his country is now running 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for its controversial nuclear programme.

The announcement came just days after the UN nuclear watchdog put the number lower, at close to 2,000.

Iran had said it aimed to have that many centrifuges by the end of July.

The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) issued a report on Thursday saying the Iranian enrichment program had slowed and the country was cooperating with its nuclear investigation,

It was thought that the report could fend off calls for a third round of sanctions against Iran, but any such slowing down has today been denied.

"The West thought the Iranian nation would give in after just a resolution, but now we have taken another step in the nuclear progress and launched more than 3,000 centrifuge machines, installing a new cascade every week," Ahmadinejad said to a group of students in remarks carried by the state television.

Western experts say 3,000 centrifuges operating non-stop and without glitches for long periods could make enough material for one bomb in about a year, if that was Iran's goal.

Iran previously announced the operation of 3,000 centrifuges back in April, but the IAEA said at the time that Iran had only 328 centrifuges operating at its underground Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran.