Bolton: Iran Must be Struck Iran in Next 8 Days

18 Aug 2010 (Jerusalem) Israel has to strike Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power facility within the “next eight days” if it wants to foil Tehran’s nuclear ambitions as Russia will load a
shipment of atomic fuel into the plant’s core this week, a former US envoy to the UN said.

John Bolton made the comments in an interview to the Fox Business Network, a week after Russia announced that it will begin loading the Bushehr reactor with uranium fuel from August 21.

The former US diplomat warned that once the Bushehr facility is operational it will be too late for a military air strike against Iran because such an attack would spread radiation and harm 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 said. “So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days,” The Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying.

However, he saw the possibility of a military strike “unlikely”, even though without the attack both Israel and the US would be in trouble. “Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the US in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor,” he noted.

The former US envoy described the completion of the reactor as a “significant victory for Iran.”

Source: India Express