‘Days left’ for Israel to strike Iranian nuclear plant

ISRAEL has only days left to launch a military strike against Iran’s Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said.

Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia’s help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant’s core.

At that point, John Bolton warned, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians.

“Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they’re in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it,” Bolton told Fox Business Network.

“So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move.”

Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said, “Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has, and that is a functioning nuclear reactor.”

But when asked whether he expected Israel to launch strikes against Iran within the next few days, Bolton was sceptical.

“I don’t think so, I’m afraid that they’ve lost this opportunity,” he said.

The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticised Russia’s role in the development of the plant, saying “the Russians are, as they often do, playing both sides against the middle. The idea of being able to stick a thumb in America’s eye always figures prominently in Moscow,” he added.

Iran dismissed the possibilities of such an attack from its arch foes.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said “these threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning”.

“According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences,” he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran.

Iranian officials say Iran has stepped up defensive measures at the plant to protect it from attacks.

Russia has been building the Bushehr plant since the mid-1990s but the project was marred by delays, and the issue is hugely sensitive amid Tehran’s standoff with the West and Israel over its nuclear ambitions.