Will Bush Nuke Iran?

The media is all abuzz with the story by Seymour Hersh that the Bush Administration is considering the use of nukes to stop the Iranian nuclear program:

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, according to a new report.

Longtime investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who claims to have high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts, said President Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler." Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, makes his new claims in The New Yorker magazine, according to the London Telegraph.

Some U.S. military chiefs have unsuccessfully urged the White House to drop the nuclear option from its war plans, Hersh writes in The New Yorker. The conviction that Ahmedinejad would attack Israel or U.S. forces in the Middle East, if Iran obtains atomic weapons, is what drives American planning for the destruction of Tehran's nuclear program.

Hersh claims that one of the plans, presented to the White House by the Pentagon, entails the use of a bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One alleged target is Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, 200 miles south of Tehran.

Although Iran claims that its nuclear program is peaceful, U.S. and European intelligence agencies are certain that Tehran is trying to develop atomic weapons. In contrast to the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there are no disagreements within Western intelligence about Iran's plans.
The Telegraph disclosed recently that senior Pentagon strategists are updating plans to strike Iran's nuclear sites with long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched missiles.

Note that the article says Bush is "considering" the use of nukes against Iran. Of course he is. It's the job of the Pentagon and the administration to look at all options, and I'm sure nukes are one of them. However, it's a big leap from "considering" to "will nuke Iran", and many commentators have already made that jump. Given that we have war plans on file for just about every country on earth, I'm not sure this is that big a story.

UPDATE: The White House responds:

A magazine news story suggesting the Bush administration will go to war to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb is long on hype and short on facts, a senior administration official said Sunday.