Attack on Iran Would Strengthen Hardliners

Frank Barnaby, a former nuclear weapons scientist, now a consultant for the Oxford Research Group, has said that an attack on Iran is likely to backfire and accelerate Tehran's development of a nuclear bomb.

Air strikes, reportedly being contemplated as an option by the White House, would strengthen the hand of Iranian hardliners, unite the Iranian population behind a bomb, and would almost certainly trigger an underground crash programme to build a small number of warheads as quickly as possible ... Air strikes would be unlikely to destroy all the centrifuges Iran is using to enrich uranium. An attack could trigger a walkout by Iran from the non-proliferation treaty and the departure of UN inspectors. It could also lead to the departure of Russian experts at an Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr, leaving a potential source of plutonium unmonitored.