Israel would have a tough time destroying Iranian nuclear facilities, which are numerous, buried deep underground and shielded by barriers 60 feet thick, a Newsweek story said.

Thus short of invading Iran, it is inevitable that Tehran will be able to develop nuclear weapons, leaving the United States with only one remaining option: to defy Russian opposition and build the planned European Missile Defense (EMD) system to destroy any missiles that Iran launches. (Please see full stories in this issue.)

The Newsweek report comes as a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said that Iran won’t cease its nuclear production program, so that an imperiled Israel may be forced to use air strikes in an attempt to knock out Iranian nuclear facilities, perhaps during the next two months.

For Israel to succeed in annihilating Iranian nuclear capabilities, it would have to simultaneously and successfully hit at least four different Iranian nuclear development sites, employing multiple bunker-busting conventional munitions to strike each target simultaneously, the magazine reported. The only other option would be for Israel to use nuclear weapons on the Iranian sites, which the report discounted as improbable.

If Iran develops nuclear weapons and mounts them on the ever-longer-range missiles it is acquiring, the United States would block any Iranian missile attack on American or allied cities with the EMD system, a variant of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system now installed in Alaska and California.

As the threat grows, Iran has launched multiple missiles in salvo tests; launched a missile from a submerged submarine; and announced plans for a space program, which would involve much the same technology as an intercontinental ballistic missile that could strike targets anywhere in the world, including the United States.

Also, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be wiped from the map, and that Israel soon shall cease to exist.

This transpires as Germany has lost one of its best spies, who had infiltrated the Iranian nuclear program and provided Western intelligence efforts with pictures of tunnel- digging work and Iranian nuclear-program documents, Newsweek quoted the German magazine Der Spiegel as reporting.