CAIRO, April 9, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – The administration of US President George W. Bush is looking "seriously" at striking Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, an option that has created misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and prompted some officers to consider resigning, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says in a new report.

One of the Pentagon's initial option plans, as presented to the White House, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites in Iran, Hersh writes in the April 17 issue of the New Yorker magazine.

One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran.

The tactical nuclear option has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a Pentagon adviser told Hersh.

"Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout—we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years," said a former high-level Defense Department official.

"This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out—remove the nuclear option—they’re shouted down," he said.

Another former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush administration, said that some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way.

American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions—rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing—since last summer within range of Iranian coastal radars, he noted.

Hersh won a Pulitzer prize in 1970 for uncovering the My Lai massacre of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children, on March 16, 1968 by US troops.

His reporting on abuses by American troops at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison helped expose one of the worst scandals to hit the Bush administration.

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and some officers have talked about resigning, a former senior intelligence official said.

Late this winter, he added, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success.

"There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries," the Pentagon adviser told Hersh.

"This goes to high levels."

The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran.

"The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks," the adviser noted.

"And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen."

There is a growing conviction among members of the US military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change, Hersh concludes.

According to the former senior intelligence official Bush and others in the White House view Mahmud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.

"That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ "

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said Bush believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do" and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."

A US congressman said the president has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat, with no one in the meetings "really objecting" to the talk of war.

"The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?"

The first former defense official told Hersh that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government."

"I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, What are they smoking?" he said.