14 thoughts on “New Scientific Study Predicts 85,000 Casualties, “Devastating Consequences” for Iran Attack – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. It seems to be an article of faith that bunker buster bombs contain depleted uranium.
    Given the materials they are required to penetrate, there isn’t actually a compelling technical reason why they should.
    The first batch of GBU 27s was made from retired 8″ Howitzer barrels with a hardened steel plug in the nose. These penetrated quite adequately, but the explosive content (about 500lb out of a 5,000lb device) doesn’t seem to have been enough in practice. They penetrate because there’s 4,500lb of steel in a relatively small diameter and it arrives at very high speed. Putting uranium, tungsten or any other material on the nose won’t change anything unless the concrete is covered with face-hardened steel armour, or something in the nature of titanium. Large steel bombs have penetrated even very thick face-hardened battleship armour in the past, see below.

    The GBU 57 is definitely steel, although there’s an awful lot of steel.

    The WW2 Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs were made of high quality steel and worked on everything from V2 launch bunkers to the Tirpitz: the definitive face-hardened armour structure. It’s quite possible to get through very thick concrete without resort to exotic materials, though these bombs were really designed to be dropped into the soil NEXT to concrete structures and penetrate deeply enough to couple all the explosive energy into a shockwave which would break the concrete. (Although 4 tons lighter than the GBU 57, the Grand Slam carried twice the explosive force.)

    The problem is going to come from whatever radioactive materials are already in the site that’s bombed: I don’t think that non-nuclear bunker busters will contribute directly to any radioactive contamination, and in the case of nuclear ones, the presence or absence of a DU nosecap is likely to be immaterial when the warhead is showering an underground hall full of uranium enrichment machinery with high energy neutrons. That’s where the main radiological burden is going to come from if this exercise is pursued and it could be huge.

    The consequences of bombing are going to be dire, but it’s the dispersal (and possible fission) of material already in the targets that will make it so.

  2. You know that he is a major donor to the Romney campaign and other Republicans, right?
    He might have an angle here that is antithetical to progressive values.

  3. This is one of the most important posts I’ve read on the fallout of an Iranian strike. But I would ask you to project the
    environmental – particularly as regards toxins and radioactivity – threats to Israel. The ecology of the Middle East is
    interdependent from the view of the wind maps. The other important projection is how many other – non aligned countries
    would be negatively impacted.

  4. That is an amazing amount of devastation especially bearing in mind that there is no proof Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program. How any politician can view a report such as this one and still view the prospect of an attack on Iran in purely abstract terms is beyond my comprehension. Having even a small inkling of what an attack on Iran would entail, in terms of human suffering and long term serious consequences to the entire region should be enough to want to stop Israel dead in its tracks and reconsider the whole issue. I have asked many, many times what would be so horrible if Iran were to develop nuclear weapons. Is there some kind of fantasy that as soon as they cobble a few together, they’ll aim them at Tel Aviv, or what?

  5. YOU hoped to publish this piece so that a much wider audience will read it and the study…. I agree

    I just did my part and shared it on FB 🙂

    Mad Angel on FB

  6. As Richard points out, Semnani’s report contains two parts. (1) The technical/scientific portion that is very good. (2) The political part, which is right-wing and sounds like pro-war. He appears to be a right-wing Iranian-American in favor of regime change, which only means war if it is to be done by the U.S. and its allies. But, I cannot imagine a war without any attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. So, in that sense he is confused without perhaps realizing it, or may be he is and has released his report at this particular point in time.

    The vast majority of Iranians also want a regime change, but done by them at their own pace, without outside intervention. Given Iranians’s experience with the West’s intervention in Iran, from the 1953 coup, to encouraging and supporting Iraq in its war with Iran, to the Contra Affairs whose real purpose was to help dragging the Iran-Iraq war so that both nations continue to bleed, to sanctions imposed on Iran for a non-existent nuclear program, and de-listing a despicable terrorist cult such as the MEK from the list of foreign terrorist organizations, they do not want the West’s “help.”

  7. I assume that Israel and the US would have to invade an occupy Iran to dig down and demolish any nuclear sites the bombers missed or only damaged.

    Estimate the blood, and add to the 85,000.

  8. Dig down where? To find imaginary nuclear stockpiles? Killing 85,000 plus people to satisfy a death fantasy is beyond the realm of reason.

    What happens when nuclear reactors are damaged? Check out Chernobyl and Fukushima. And these nutball Israelis think they must bomb Iran to be safe?? It’s mind boggling.

  9. With what has happened to Iraq and libya, and the tearing apart of Syria, all the consequences talked about in this article probably don’t matter to TPTB. The killing, destruction and turmoil seem to be the desired outcome of the West and Israel.

  10. Imaginary Flashback to a Rihard Silverstein “news article” in 1948:

    A study from a major university reports that US worries about a threat from Japanese and German allies claims that US pre-intervetion would cause upwards of one million casualties. Despite reports of Nazi spies in Hawaii surfacing and plans to bomb the US fleet in Hawaii by the Japanese, it is considered the fault of the United States and Great Britain that war looms with the Axis Powers. Of note, talks about the Rape of Nanking, and German atrocities in Russia are the faults of the allies as the peace loving Germans and Japanese are merely conducting their own oprvate business. Sanctions placed on Japan in the Pacific after atrocities committed in China are said to be rumor mongering created by Jews in America who see the loss of Chinese imports as a harm to their incomes. We are all in favor of regime change, but any way promoted by deomcoratic nations is considered outside interference. At this writing, rumors are circulating of a Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor, however, this is probably just a plot to distract from the noble enterprises of the Japanese and German progressive movements against imperialism. We will keep you updated.

    1. Lee also forgot to mention how wise the US must have been to lock up all those terrorist Japanese Americans in prison camps during WW II. I’m sure he sleeps like a baby a night knowing all those terrorist Palestinians are safely locked up behind the separation wall and in the open air prison known as Gaza.

      Being prepared for attack is a good thing, isn’t it, Lee?

  11. Anybody who seriously thinks that it’s a good idea for Iran to acquire Nuclear weapons on the basis that… Israel has them is MAD. We should be working towards a world with less WMD, not more.

    That said, Israel has no ‘right’ whatsoever to launch a preemptive strike on Iran.

    In my opinion the West can not claim to take the moral high ground when our Governments continue to flout International law when it suits them and continue to turn a blind eye to Israel’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Sudan, Syria etc. Israel violates the UN every single day, but the International community does nothing, and to my knowledge has not imposed any sanctions – they just get away with it. This is not fair, this is not right and the current course means there can be no resolution and therefore no peace, and in the fullness of time can not end in a good way.

    The solution is not easy, but it has to start with Israel and the US taking the following steps….

    – Israel returns to 1967 borders. Please stop illegally settling!
    – Israel and US stop vetoing Palestinian sovereignty. Palestine has to be recognised as an independant country.
    – Israel to acknowledge that she has WMD, and agree a timetable to reduce stockpiles to eventually zero.

    Of course this is never going to happen, but is probably the only way that peace would have any sort of chance of prevailing. Israel has to show willing, and perhaps if she was to give a little then this could bring Iran to the negotiating table for meaningful dialogue.

    Peace

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