Iran Building More Tunnels Than Hamas, Has Nuclear Stuff In Them

It is fun to watch the news for Hamas terrorists killed in tunnel collapses around the Gaza Strip.  While I don’t like when people die in general, but when terrorists die smuggling weapons intended to kill innocent Israelis, I have to laugh a little.

However, when Iranian build reinforced concrete and steel tunnels deep underground to hide nuclear development, I am not amused.  Iran has been building a network of tunnels for years, and it seems that the intelligence community does not really know what is going on down there.  As the New York Times puts it:

Last September, when Iran’s uranium enrichment plant buried inside a mountain near the holy city of Qum was revealed, the episode cast light on a wider pattern: Over the past decade, Iran has quietly hidden an increasingly large part of its atomic complex in networks of tunnels and bunkers across the country.

In doing so, American government and private experts say, Iran has achieved a double purpose. Not only has it shielded its infrastructure from military attack in warrens of dense rock, but it has further obscured the scale and nature of its notoriously opaque nuclear effort. The discovery of the Qum plant only heightened fears about other undeclared sites.

United States officials, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, do not think an attack on Iran at this point is worth the possible consequences.  They have been allowed to go to far to be stopped, any military action against Iran today would simply slow down nuclear development by two to three years.

Even the Israelis concede that solid rock can render bombs useless. Late last month, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, told Parliament that the Qum plant was “located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack.”

So, what do we do now?  Iran has the ability to build a nuclear bomb at will and has missiles capable of taking those warheads to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, or into Western Europe.  This is getting to be an awfully familiar scene, just with new players.  Twice in the last two generations Germany built up a strong military force, both technologically and in terms of manpower, and publicly said what their intentions were.  The second time, 6 million Jews were murdered while much the world did nothing.

Today, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is telling the world what he is doing and openly admits that Iran is developing nuclear technology.  We have passed a point of no return.  Iranian leadership wants to destroy Israel and hates the West, and we are sitting here watching them do whatever they want.

I am not sure what to do anymore.  I have written dozens of posts telling Israeli, US, and European leaders to do something before it is too late.  Many others have too.  But now it seems that it is too late.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of big tunnels in Iran, according to American government and private experts, and the lines separating their uses can be fuzzy. Companies owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, for example, build civilian as well as military tunnels.

No one in the West knows how much, or exactly what part, of Iran’s nuclear program lies hidden. Still, evidence of the downward atomic push is clear to the inquisitive.

What do you all think we need to do, or can do?  What should Israel or Western powers do?  Please give your thoughts in the comments.