WASHINGTON, Feb 20: Officials in Washington are describing as “just a contingency plan” media reports that the US Defence Department is preparing final plans to attack Iran if its government insisted on going ahead with its nuclear programme.

In a front-page dispatch from Washington London’s Sunday Telegraph reported that the Pentagon was drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against nuclear sites in Iran.

But officials in Washington, when asked for comments, said this was just a contingency plan. “It’s like dozens of other plans the military often makes but all of them are not implemented,” said one official who did not want to be identified.

The Telegraph, however, quotes a senior Pentagon official as saying that this was “more than just the standard military contingency assessment” and has taken on “much greater urgency in recent months”.

The planners are now “identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation”. They are reporting directly to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with a view to carry out a military strike against Iran in case diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Tehran to suspend its nuclear ambitions, the report said.

Attacking Iran, described by a US intelligence report as “more confident and assertive” than it has been since the early days of the 1979 Islamic revolution, would put America at odds with its European partners who fear that the attack would send oil prices to unprecedented highs.

Another media report said that a military strike against Iran “would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 18,000 kilograms of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices.”

Recent media reports quoting US intelligence sources said President George W. Bush was planning to add conventional ballistic missiles to the armoury of the US nuclear Trident submarines within the next two years.