NYT: Iran and the Bomb

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/politics/12nuke.html?oref=login&oref=login

...a senior European official related a conversation in which
Iranians deeply involved in the talks warned that any military action would
be futile.

The official said the Iranians boasted that "they can rebuild the facilities
in six months," using indigenous technology.

...The Iranians remember Osirak, the site of a lightning Israeli airstrike
against an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 that set back Saddam Hussein's
nuclear ambitions by a decade. American and European intelligence officials
say Iran has taken the lesson to heart, spreading its nuclear facilities
around the country, burying some underground and putting others in the
middle of crowded urban areas.

For example, the International Atomic Energy Agency last year found
centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, behind a false wall at the
Kalaye Electric Company in a densely populated corner of Tehran, where there
would be no way to conduct a military strike without causing major civilian
casualties. "They are not about to make the same mistake Saddam did," a
senior administration official said.