Seymour Hersh: Bush Administration Planning Possible Major Air Attack on Iran

We are joined today by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh. In the latest issue of the New Yorker, Hersh reports that the Bush administration has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Sources told Hersh that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups.

One of the military's initial option plans calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon against suspected underground nuclear sites.

On Monday, President Bush dismissed Hersh's article saying, "What you're reading is wild speculation." Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to comment on possible plans for military action against Iran at a press conference on Tuesday. Rumsfeld told reporters, "We have, I don't know how many, various contingency plans in this department and the last thing I am going to start telling you, or anyone else in the press or the world, at what point we refresh a plan or don't refresh a plan, and why. It just isn't useful,"

Meanwhile Iran is moving forward on its nuclear program. On Tuesday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that the country had succeeded for the first time in enriching uranium on a small scale. The Iranian president insisted that the country's nuclear program is for peaceful means and not to build nuclear weapons.

* Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for the New Yorker. His latest article is titled "The Iran Plans: How Far Will the White House Go?"

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