The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

Here's the article from the New Yorker about the situation.

Bush needs to be made aware that there is no possible way that the use of nuclear weapons is to be considered an acceptable tactic, under any circumstances.

There is a Cold War precedent for targeting deep underground bunkers with nuclear weapons. In the early nineteen-eighties, the American intelligence community watched as the Soviet government began digging a huge underground complex outside Moscow. Analysts concluded that the underground facility was designed for “continuity of government”—for the political and military leadership to survive a nuclear war. (There are similar facilities, in Virginia and Pennsylvania, for the American leadership.) The Soviet facility still exists, and much of what the U.S. knows about it remains classified. “The ‘tell’ ”—the giveaway—“was the ventilator shafts, some of which were disguised,” the former senior intelligence official told me. At the time, he said, it was determined that “only nukes” could destroy the bunker. He added that some American intelligence analysts believe that the Russians helped the Iranians design their underground facility. “We see a similarity of design,” specifically in the ventilator shafts, he said.

Its a little off topic but wow, this is under Ramenki, the neighborhood where I lived in southwest Moscow. There are air ducts popping up everywhere, entrances into sides of hills (now converted into a private auto repair shop), and supposedly you could fit 50,000 people down there for a long time, and deliver them there from Moscow's 'Metro 2', the government system that runs in parallel to the main metro. There's very little english press coverage of this.

Seymour Hersh checks in on the Iran situation in The New Yorker. There is a heavy emphasis on American usage of tactical nuclear weapons, particularly the newer bunker busting designs. There is a fair amount of information in this article about what many of the players are thinking.

This is one of those articles that leaves you feeling uncomfortable.