Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former U.S. envoy to the U.N. has said.
Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia’s help, next week, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant’s core.
At that point, former John Bolton warned Monday, 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 in the next eight days."
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 actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was skeptical.
"I don’t think so, I’m afraid that they’ve lost this opportunity," he said.
The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticized 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.
Threats have became repetitive and meaningless: Iranian official
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that "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 Bushehr plant to protect it from any 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.
The U.N. Security Council hit Tehran with a fourth set of sanctions on June 9 over its nuclear program, and the United States and European Union followed up with tougher punitive measures targeting Iran’s banking and energy sectors.
The Bushehr project was first launched by the late shah in the 1970s using contractors from German firm Siemens. But it was shelved when he was deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
It was revived after the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, as Iran’s new supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his first president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, backed the project.
In 1995, Iran won the support of Russia which agreed to finish building the plant and fuel it.
Also, officials have said that Iran’s nuclear plant will be launched on August 21 to eventually generate electricity.
Iranian fighter jet crashes in Bushehr:Reports
An Iranian air force jet crashed Tuesday in the southern province of Bushehr which houses a nuclear power plant, said a Mehr news agency report that added the two airmen on board ejected and survived.
The aircraft, a U.S.-made F4 jet fighter that requires a two-person crew, went down about five kilometers (more than three miles) from the Bushehr Special Economy Zone, the report said.
The English-language Press TV channel’s website said the jet crashed near Shif Island, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Iran’s first nuclear power plant in Bushehr which the Islamic republic plans to activate on Saturday.
"Fortunately the two pilots were successful in ejecting themselves and have been taken to a hospital," Bushehr emergency services chief Gholam Reza Keshtkar was quoted as saying by Mehr.
A separate report by Fars news agency, quoting provincial official Mohammad Hassan Shanbadi, said the two pilots "were in good condition."
"They were flying from the city of Borzjan and the crash was the result of technical faults," Shanbadi said, adding the jet went down in a desert area and "caused no problem to anyone."
Officials say Tehran has stepped up defensive measures at the plant to protect it from any attacks as arch-foes Israel and the United States have never ruled out a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Iranian military commanders regularly boast of Tehran’s abilities to thwart any military strikes and even say it has missiles which can hit any target in Israel