This story outlines what ought to be one of the most difficult decisions in journalism, that of whether to publish secret war plans. Unfortunately, from my experience in journalism school, most in the profession answer that question with a default “yes.”

From the story:

“ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

“Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear ‘bunker-busters’, according to several Israeli military sources.

“The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.”

People are bound to make a big deal of the attack being “nuclear,” but these are tactical weapons designed for use on a battlefield, not strategic ones meant to annihilate cities. (Thanks to The Sunday Times for explaining that distinction — not. Though at least they compared the force to that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.)

This is a unique situation to my experience, with journalists from one country (the UK) breaking the plans of another country (Israel). Typically, it’s journalists in liberal democracies aching to undermine their own countries’ security.

(In one journalism class, I said it was “traitorous” to undermine your own country’s military on the field. The professor looked at me, dumbfounded, and said something like “but it’s the government.” In another class a professor recounted a panel discussion where a group of journalists announced that they, if embedded, would not give information they gathered on enemies to the troops they were embedded with — that professor, however, wasn’t so keen on sedition.)

Back to this case — it’s so bizarre it’s hard to decide how one would weigh the pros and cons. For domestic plans, one could weigh the public interest in knowing government actions versus the public interest in the government being able to carry out important plans. But here, there’s no way for journalists to even know whether Israel’s plans, if executed, would benefit or hurt the people of Britain. And to what degree should the journalists consider Israel’s interests, Iran’s interests and the diplomatic ties between the three countries?

It would be great to have the weapons gone, but the risks to stability in the region are huge.

I would be very interested in learning about the behind-the-scenes discussions of this story. Presuming any took place beyond, “we have this information, so run it.”

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://www.therationale.com and http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.