Consider the devastating effect of nuclear strikes in Iran and Israel

Sober analysis by Nick Turse in TomDispatch that challenges the bellicose war-mongering all too prevalent in the mainstream media:

In those first minutes, they’ll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed. They’ll just stand there. Soon, you’ll notice that they are holding their arms out at a 45-degree angle. Your eyes will be drawn to their hands and you’ll think you mind is playing tricks. But it won’t be. Their fingers will start to resemble stalactites, seeming to melt toward the ground. And it won’t be long until the screaming begins. Shrieking. Moaning. Tens of thousands of victims at once. They’ll be standing amid a sea of shattered concrete and glass, a wasteland punctuated by the shells of buildings, orphaned walls, stairways leading nowhere.

This could be Tehran, or what’s left of it, just after an Israeli nuclear strike.

Iranian cities — owing to geography, climate, building construction, and population densities — are particularly vulnerable to nuclear attack, according to… a… new study, “Nuclear War Between Israel and Iran: Lethality Beyond the Pale,” published in the journal… Conflict & Health… by researchers from the University of Georgia and Harvard University. It is the first publicly released scientific assessment of what a nuclear attack in the Middle East might actually mean for people in the region.

Its scenarios are staggering.…  An Israeli attack on the Iranian capital of Tehran using five 500-kiloton weapons would, the study estimates, kill seven million people — 86% of the population — and leave close to 800,000 wounded.…  A strike with five 250-kiloton weapons would kill an estimated 5.6 million and injure 1.6 million, according to predictions made using an advanced software package designed to calculate mass casualties from a nuclear detonation.

Estimates of the civilian toll in other Iranian cities are even more horrendous.…  A nuclear assault on the city of… Arak, the site of a… heavy water plant… central to Iran’s nuclear program, would potentially kill 93% of its 424,000 residents.…  Three 100-kiloton nuclear weapons hitting the Persian Gulf… port… of Bandar Abbas would slaughter an estimated 94% of its 468,000 citizens, leaving just 1% of the population uninjured.…  A multi-weapon strike on Kermanshah,… a Kurdish city… with a population of 752,000, would result in an almost unfathomable 99.9% casualty rate.… 

Cham Dallas, the director of the Institute for Health Management and Mass Destruction Defense at the University of Georgia and lead author of the study, says that the projections are the most catastrophic he’s seen in more than… 30 years… analyzing weapons of mass destruction… and their potential effects.…  “The fatality rates are the highest of any nuke simulation I’ve ever done,” he told me by phone from the nuclear disaster zone in Fukushima, Japan, where he was doing research.…  “It’s the perfect storm for high fatality rates.”

Israel has never confirmed or denied possessing nuclear weapons, but is widelyknown… to have up to… several hundred… nuclear warheads in its arsenal.…  Iran has no nuclear weapons and its leaders claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes only. … Published reports… suggest… that American intelligence agencies and Israel’s intelligence service are in agreement: Iran suspended its nuclear weapons development program in 2003.… 

Dallas and his colleagues nonetheless ran simulations for potential Iranian nuclear strikes on the Israeli cities of Beer Sheva, Haifa, and Tel Aviv using much smaller 15-kiloton weapons, similar in strength to those… dropped… by the United States on the Japanese cities of… Hiroshima… and Nagasaki in August 1945.…  Their analyses suggest that, in Beer Shiva, half of the population of 209,000 would be killed and one-sixth injured.…  Haifa would see similar casualty ratios, including 40,000 trauma victims.…  A strike on Tel Aviv with two 15-kiloton weapons would potentially slaughter 17% of the population — nearly 230,000 people.…  Close to 150,000 residents would likely be injured.… 

These forecasts, like those for Iranian cities, are difficult even for experts to assess.…  “Obviously,… accurate predictions of casualty and fatality estimates are next to impossible to obtain,” says Dr.… Glen Reeves, a longtime consultant on the… medical effects of radiation… for the Defense Department’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, who was not involved in the research. … “I think their estimates are probably high but not impossibly so.”… 

According to… Paul Carroll… of the Ploughshares Fund, a San Francisco-based foundation that advocates for nuclear disarmament, “the results would be catastrophic” if major Iranian cities were attacked with modern nuclear weapons.…  “I don’t see 75% [fatality rates as] being out of the question,” says Carroll, after factoring in the longer-term effects of radiation sickness, burns, and a devastated medical infrastructure.… 

According to Dallas and his colleagues, the marked disparity between estimated fatalities in Israel and Iran can be explained by a number of factors.…  As a start, Israel is presumed to have extremely… powerful… nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery capabilities including long-range Jericho missiles, land-based cruise missiles, submarine-launched missiles, and advanced aircraft with precision targeting technology. … … 

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