Report: U.K. & U.S. Drawing Up Plan to Attack Iran

The UK and U.S. are drawing up plans to attack Iran amid growing tensions in the Middle East, it was claimed last night.

Barack Obama and David Cameron are preparing for war after reports that Iran now has enough enriched uranium for four nuclear weapons.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hardline regime in Tehran has been linked to three assassination plots on foreign soil, according to senior officials in Whitehall.

Iran has come sharply back into focus following the end of the Libya conflict.

And the unrest has been inflamed by sabre-rattling from top politicians in Israel.

President Obama said Iran’s nuclear programme continues to pose a threat and that he and French president Nicolas Sarkozy want the international community to maintain pressure on the country to admit its intentions.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is preparing to reveal intelligence on Iran’s alleged nuclear arms experiments.

Iran has consistently denied that it is trying to build nuclear weapons and insists the programme is for peaceful purposes.

The U.S., Britain and France want the IAEA to share its intelligence, but Russia and China are pressing for the report to be delayed or scrapped entirely.

Yesterday it was revealed that Tel Aviv had successfully test-fired a rocket capable of carrying a nuclear warhead which could strike Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak are reportedly agitating for a pre-emptive attack against the Islamic state.

The UK would be likely to agree to any U.S. decision to invade, even though the Ministry of Defence are stretched to breaking point by swingeing budget cuts and wars in Afghanistan and Libya.

An MoD spokesman said: ‘The British government believes that a dual track strategy of pressure and engagement is the best approach to address the threat from Iran’s nuclear programme and avoid regional conflict.

‘We want a negotiated solution – but all options should be kept on the table.’

A special unit at the MoD has been instructed to work out the UK’s strategy if the Army should invade Iran.

War planners will look at potential deployments of Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles and RAF fighter jets armed with precision-guided Paveway IV and Brimstone bombs and missiles, surveillance planes and air-to-air refuelling.

Senior Whitehall figures have expressed alarm that Iran appeared ‘newly aggressive – and we are not quite sure why’.

Western intelligence has also suggested that Iran is hiding the material for a covert nuclear weapons programme in fortified bunkers which cannot be reached by conventional missiles.

Barack Obama is understood to have no wish to attack Iran in the run-up to the White House elections next year. But Washington may be pressured by Israel if Iran’s nuclear programme is not curtailed.

Mr Netanyahu is apparently also lobbying Cabinet members for a military strike, despite the likelihood it would draw a retaliation from Iran.

An Israeli defence official said the rocket launched by the military had merely been a long-planned test for a ‘propulsion system’.

Further information about the rocket was censored by the military, but foreign reports said it was a long-range Jericho missile – capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and striking Iran.

Israel considers Iran its most dangerous threat. It cites Tehran’s nuclear programme, ballistic missile development, repeated references by the Iranian leader to Israel’s destruction and the government’s support for anti-Israel militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Mr Ahmadinejad denies his country is trying to produce a bomb, claiming its nuclear programme is only intended to produce energy for the oil-rich country.

But the work could only be for the design and development of a nuclear warhead, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report.