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.

THE IRAN PLANS: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?