August 30, 2015 6:31 pm
WASHINGTON (Web Desk) – The United States had mulled over using nukes against Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attacks, a German newspaper has claimed.
According to German newspaper Der Spiegel, Michael Steiner, who served as a political advisor to the then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, told the paper that the nuclear option was one of the possibilities examined after the September 11 attacks
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“The papers were written,” Steiner said when asked whether the US was considered using nuclear weapons in response to the attacks orchestrated by Al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden, in which almost 3,000 people were killed. “They had really played through all possibilities.”
Steiner added that Schroder had feared that the U.S., which was in a state of shock following the attacks, would have overreacted.
Moreover, Steiner said in the interview that Schroder rejected his idea to publish a statement declaring “unconditional support” for the US.
Tensions between Schroder and the then US President George Bush mounted in 2003 when the chancellor refused to join US-led coalition in the military campaign against Iraq.