Home > The Human Costs of Bombing Iran by Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive)

The Human Costs of Bombing Iran by Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive)

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 11 April 2006
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Nuclear Wars and conflicts International

Published on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 by The Progressive
The Human Costs of Bombing Iran
by Matthew Rothschild

George Bush didn’t exactly deny Seymour Hersh’s report in The New Yorker that the Administration is considering using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.

Neither did Scott McClellan.

Bush called it “wild speculation,” and McClellan said the United States would go ahead with "normal military contingency planning."

Those are hardly categorical denials.

So let’s look at what the human costs of dropping a tactical nuclear weapon on Iran might entail.

They are astronomical.

“The number of deaths could exceed a million, and the number of people with increased cancer risks could exceed 10 million,” according to a backgrounder by the Union of Concerned Scientists from May 2005.

The National Academy of Sciences studied these earth-penetrating nuclear weapons last year. They could “kill up to a million people or more if used in heavily populated areas,” concluded the report, which was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Physicians for Social Responsibility examined the risks of a more advanced buster-bunker weapon, and it eerily tabulated the toll from an attack on the underground nuclear facility in Esfahan, Iran. “Three million people would be killed by radiation within two weeks of the explosion, and 35 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, would be exposed to increased levels of cancer-causing radiation,” according to a summary of that study in the backgrounder by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

While Congress last year denied funding for a new nuclear bunker-buster weapon, the Pentagon already has a stockpile of one such weapon in the arsenal: the B61-Mod11, according to Stephen Young, a senior analyst at the Federation of the American Scientists.

That the Administration is considering using such a weapon against Iran is “horrifying and ludicrous,” says Young.

Forum posts

  • The American government *is* horrifying and ludicrous! They are probably hoping that all those Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, etc. are going to die; after all, they aren’t "Christians" and are therefore already condemned to Hell. They don’t realise that the radiation will eventually (within a couple of years!) spread across the whole world, infecting them and their cronies as well as the rest of us. Ignorance is not bliss, it is insane!

  • Well Well. It is now surmised that Russia and China may deploy nuclear weapons in Iran to protect their investments in that country. Billions of dollars have been invested by Russia and China with Iranian business’ , so to thwart the American march to global imperialism Iran may be protected by the most convincing deterent mankind has invented. This will bring the situation between the redneck Bush Administration and Irans civil nuclear ambitions to a stalemate.
    It may also wake up the American public ( the most bovine race of people on this planet) to the fact that they will also have the threat of nuclear destruction against their own country if the redneck Bush Administraion does not slow down or stop its malevolent quest for global domination.

    • Don’t count on the American public to be fair when it comes to Islam.

      Between the frighten mindset and belief that they are the superior race, most will grasp at the phantoms created in their own minds making them real and react to with all too real bombs.

      If there is one truism, it is that, without verbalization, the American public believes in a God that in in their image — everyone else should be killed and their life force consumed by Americans.

      No amount of reasoning can over come this representation.

  • Thank you for this article with numbers of humans that would be involved is such an unthinkable attack were launched. Yet numbers do not stir emotions. We need descriptive words.

    Years ago I was given a booklet put out by the Physicians for Socail Responsibility vividly describing a nuclear attack on New York City. It outlined the smells, burns - internal, external, eyes - you run but you can’t hide, you jump in the East River only to find it exceeds the boiling point.

    Does anyone have a copy of that booklet? Or can someone in the organization make an attempt to tell the peple what would happen here as well as in Iran? We don’t need to exaggerate the facts - just let them speak for themselves.

    thanks.
    CArol

  • According to a report released by the Asia Times on April 16, 2006, SCO, the new free trade organization started by Russia and China in 2001, have now made India, Pakistan and Iran full-fledged members of their organization. Go to:

    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HD18Ad02.html

    SCO, which stands for Shanghai Cooperation Organization, is an organization very much like the old European Common Market. What does this have to do with a possible attack by the US on Iran? Everything. It points out the obvious fact that the only nation on Earth that will actively support such an attack would be Israel, a country with no great natural resources, a country whose economy would not be solvent without US aid, a country whose strategic importance to the US is virtually nil. Now that Tony Blair has officially announced that the UK will not be involved in any military action against Iran, the US would be almost all alone in an attack on Iran, save this ’staunch’ ally that has spied relentlessly on the US for the last 40 years, a ’staunch’ ally that has proven to be more of a burden than it has been a helpful partner. Geopolitically as well as economically, the US has everything to lose and nothing to gain by attacking Iran.
    But here in America, the fundamentalist right, in all reality, a new kind of fascism, have been holding sway over an ignorant and apathetic population that still believes that the US is the same economic giant it was back in 1946. Here in America we have many closet-racists that believe all Muslims should pay for what happened on 9/11. Prior to 9/11 I wouldn’t have believed that so many white Americans could have so much racial hatred in their hearts, but they do. So much for their ’Christian’ upbringing, which is of course, a great crock of shit. Believe me, there are everywhere, and as long as we have an ignorant, racist majority holding sway, the neocons will attack Iran. These vicious parasites obviously don’t care if our nation will lose most of its allies, nor do they care if an attack on Iran will precipitate the fall of the US dollar. The Russians, Chinese and Indians will withdraw all their foreign holdings in the US Treasury, which is close to $1 trillion, if Iran is attacked. The quickest way to kill this godforsaken American dragon of death is to cut off its money supply. Japan and Britain should do likewise. Money is the only incentive the neocons understand, other than military might. Take it away from them, and they will die a quick death.