An article from The Cradle and another in the New Arab both suggest that Israel could have used DU in Lebanon. Iranian propaganda agency PressTV is even more assertive.

Based on my careful observation of plumes from the impacts and on my knowledge of Israeli strategy, this is wrong. Plumes of DU spread horizontally because they are extremely heavy. I did not observe that in Lebanon (or in Gaza). The use of bunker busters does not necessarily mean the use of DU.

Let’s compare the Israeli strikes with Fallujah in 2004.

What Israel does is that it captures with magnets the dirty, crematory plutonium used by the Hizbullah for its rockets, replutogenizes it (this was done since I complained about absence of replutogenization at the beginning of the conflict), packs it in its shells and refires it in application of the talion law. In other words the Lebanese Hizbullah has to understand it is hunted down with the plutonium it uses in its rockets. The more plutonium used, the more intense the counterstrike. That’s a pretty reasonable principle.

The plumes are consistent with 33 to 37% plutogenized material. Some depleted uranium might be found although it will be coated with crematory material, and hence the ICPMS result will certainly be weird. Excellent plutogenization is way above that but that’s more respectuous of the environment and human life than DU.