You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that centrifuges installed 70–80 meters underground will be largely unaffected by bombs which are believed to have an effect down to a depth of 60 meters.
ramshanker · 5h ago
Moreover, I read the wiki ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP ) that 60m penetration specification is for ~35MPA concrete. And good basalt rocks easily go 100MPA. So if Iranians choose just good Mountain, and there are plenty of them...... Mother earth is really strong some places.
mgiampapa · 4h ago
That's probably why they targeted the air duct system. It's already been cut and provides a blast channel.
mrtksn · 3h ago
They probably have blast doors on those and USA made it very clear on Flightradar24 that the bombers are coming, lock the doors.
I would assume that this thing is entirely compartmentalized, so to destroy everything you will need a bomb in every room.
According to wikipedia, US made around 20 of those bombs and Trump used 14 of those. So %70 of the stockpile is gone in one go.
Especially on the main site they dropped 3 bobs per strike location, so at best they could have destroyed 2 compartments with 6 bombs. If those were able to penetrate of course.
Honestly, it looks like it was a show like the one where Trump fights professional fighters on the ring. Just significantly more expensive.
Maybe they should just generate those images in AI, would be much more cost effective propaganda.
LastTrain · 4h ago
Ah, the Death Star theory
mgiampapa · 3h ago
If we had space wizards, the negotiation would be short. Instead we have a crazy orange man saying I will make it legal.
swat535 · 1h ago
The New York Times reported on Saturday that they had lost track of 400kg of 60% enriched uranium, which could yield 9-10 nuclear bombs:
According to Israeli media, it is not known whether the Fordow underground nuclear complex has been destroyed.
Netanyahu has already declared victory, but Iran's nuclear capabilities will likely be completely restarted, most likely within a few years or some estimations says months.
There is no doubt that during that time Iran will strengthen its aviation, intelligence and reconnaissance, which have now failed drastically. "Regime change" goal for Israel also failed.
Many more Mossad agents and collaborators will fall in Iran over the next few months as IRGC begins its crack down and Israel will surely lose a huge portion of their main weapon. Further TRUMP declaring "no regime change" today, made this matter worse.
Iran practically has a script for its problems now. Israel has learned what will happen when Iran gets thousands of their hypersonic missiles and fixes the problem with the lack of launchers which Iran will certainly continue to produce.
Only a ceasefire has been achieved, but there will certainly be a second round (likely by Israel again once more intel is gathered), because a war like this never officially ended.
More importantly, let's not forget who paid the price at the end? As always, innocent Israelis and Iranians who never knew each other or had a problem with died.
barbazoo · 5h ago
If they haven't removed the sensitive stuff before anyway after someone suggested they will make a decision within two weeks whether to attack.
bitsage · 3h ago
I find this argument hard to believe. Israel had complete air superiority for a week and was monitoring all the sites, routinely hitting the above ground nuclear facilities. I’m skeptical Iran could transfer anything significant from Fordow and not be immediately spotted by Israel.
barbazoo · 2h ago
> The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.
I still consider the main report to not be substantiated. Israel claims that they know where the stockpile is and that they have been monitoring sites[1][2]. Some official even claimed it’s mostly under the rubble. Not sure why one is to believed and the other not when neither have hard evidence.
This has been repeated so many times but the enriched uranium is far more vulnerable in transport.
barbazoo · 2h ago
> The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.
Overpressure... as the Russians taught to the Afghani's, a small explosion in an enclosed space does massive damage to both soft and hard materials.
You don't have to blow something up to destroy it.
buildbot · 5h ago
Really? I think calculating the achieved overpressure to whatever structure underground after 6x 30k pound bomb impacts is far into the “genius” category. I’d wager you’d need a team of pretty smart people to even begin to get a wrong model of that.
cjbgkagh · 5h ago
No genius needed, but all those involved are motivated to lie about it. The bombs have a depth range and 200ft (60m) is the optimistic depth for ideal conditions. These were far from ideal conditions as the location was specifically chosen to resist this. That and ultra high performance concrete is now a thing. This is why the entrance and exists were bombed and those are easy enough to dig back out again. The attack was telegraphed so advanced preparations were made. It is rumored that the entrances and exits were packed with dirt in advance to minimize the damage.
RationPhantoms · 5h ago
I don't know if it's only effective depth of the ordinance that matters here. Positive interference could be used to amplify the explosive wave of the 6 bombs that were dropped with accurate-enough timing.
cjbgkagh · 5h ago
If you were going to do that you wouldn’t waste energy breaking the rock to begin with. I highly doubt it’s feasible to time things that accurately and even if you could there is a lot of mountain in the way to soak up the energy.
The depth assumptions for the facility are often with a shallow gradient roads for the entrance and exits, but there is no need for the gradient to be shallow.
Tadpole9181 · 2h ago
And yet the leaked reports don't say that happened, they say it didn't work and that most of the material and equipment was likely already moved.
Is this where we are? Just making up technobabble to glorify the US war machine in a supposedly intellectual forum? All the while the white house says the report is real, but they disagree with the contents of their own intelligence report because "we want big bomb make big boom work good"?
After 25 years it has become abundantly clear that Iraq (the concept) is what the US is, and what it deserves.
influx · 5h ago
I wonder why the US wouldn't lie about the effective depth range. Seems kinda dumb to telegraph to your enemies how far to dig.
kcplate · 4h ago
The real weapons system specs are never disclosed. Even on retired systems the real capabilities are often still classified because they can provide clues to their replacements capabilities.
cjbgkagh · 5h ago
The math isn’t that hard and the ideal case is a linear extrapolation so people can sit down with a calculator and figure it out.
buildbot · 2h ago
The math is really that hard? I have no idea what the soil or rock is, what happens when the first bomb hits it, the second, and then the third? Does the timing matter? Does the timing matter if it's 5 minutes between? 1 hour between? Seconds between? Does the type of soil or rock compact or loosen when bombed? What's the variation in explosive yield? Does the ground transfer force from a shockwave well or poorly? Does that change after the first one?
I really doubt this is very linear.
kcplate · 4h ago
You are still relying on parameters that they are disclosing to you.
cjbgkagh · 2h ago
There are physical limits to weight, hardness, max explosive energy and max kinetic energy and these are all known. The only way to exceed them would be to drop it from a higher altitude, like space, or give it a nuclear warhead. The US isn’t the only country that has tested bunker busters and the physics involved isn’t that hard. It’s just expensive.
kcplate · 23m ago
Sure, but you have no firsthand knowledge of that information.
You are told the B2 can carry a certain payload weight.
You are told the B2 has a certain operational ceiling.
You are told the bombs are a certain weight.
You are told the bombs are made from a certain material.
You are told the bombs contain a certain type of explosive.
Everything you know about this device and its capabilities came from an organization that has every motivation to publish specs that are just enough to raise the eyebrows of the people this device is supposed to scare hell out of, but they have less than zero motivation to publish specs that speak to maximum capabilities.
So while your calculations might be accurate for the component values you gave it, your component values of your calculation are not accurate, because all you know is what you were told.
larrled · 5h ago
Credibility helps with deterrence.
potato3732842 · 5h ago
This is not a "genius" problem. This is mundane number crunching that every military has been doing for hundreds of years with ever increasing accuracy.
You need a few bombs and some places of varying geology to set them off. You take those data points, cross reference with all your historical knowledge and should be able to say whether a bunker of given construction a given depth under a given geology can be breached.
I hate how allergic to just testing and prototyping things modern engineering culture is.
Yeah, the bomb is expensive, but you gotta test it too so if you do it all right you get two birds with one stone.
PaulHoule · 5h ago
They tested those bombs plenty. It's clear that they punched three holes in that mountain, but it's a whole frickin' mountain.
Never mind the fact that bomb damage assessment is one of the most difficult problems in photograph interpretation -- it's hard enough when the target is above ground, worse when it isn't.
CoastalCoder · 5h ago
I agree, but I don't think it's entirely unique to this era.
The US Navy's torpedo station in Newport, RI produced torpedos that were really prone to failure during the first few years of WW2.
IIRC, the problem persisted so long because an admiral in charge refused to provide enough torpedos for adequate testing.
(Sorry if there are any errors here, I can't easily fact check at the moment.)
m3kw9 · 5h ago
Sure but they claim they put more than one on to it, it we don’t know how many or how accurate they were requiring one on top of the other to get more depth
everfrustrated · 5h ago
How they going to get to them?
tonyedgecombe · 5h ago
I presume they will just fire the people who did the assessment.
estebank · 5h ago
Are the US and Israel going to continuously bomb any working crew in the area that goes to dig?
I_Lorem · 1h ago
Murdering PhD's in Nuclear Engineering would be cheaper, and is a continuous Israeli program already.
We’re in the BDP stage—Bomb Driven Politics. That’s when you drop the bombs first, and then you have a meeting.
123yawaworht456 · 5h ago
if you're American, watch out for army recruitment ads without the usual DEI flavoring
Loughla · 5h ago
I graduated from a very small high school. There were fewer than 20 guys in my graduating class, fewer than 40 total graduates. I graduated in 2002. 2 guys did not join the military; because of 9/11, the rest felt some kind of patriotic duty to join up.
Of the guys I graduated with, half died either in Iraq or Afghanistan between 2002 and 2006, or killed themselves shortly after returning home. The other half are broken. Either physically or mentally.
We cannot do that again. That we're involved in this shit show is an absolute travesty.
cjbgkagh · 5h ago
“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." - Georg Hegel
Nukes or ground invasion, the point of the attack wasn’t to knock out the facilities, it was so that Trump can be dragged along ‘reluctantly’ so he can sell the conflict to his base. It is a persuasion technique called mirroring. Trump mirrors the position of the anti-war base, then slowly piece by piece he changes his position bringing his base with him. I guess how far it’ll go will depend on how effective the state is at suppressing anti-war sentiment. If history is a guide then the state can be surprisingly effective at this.
gip · 4h ago
The status of Iran’s nuclear sites (and more importantly, its stockpile of enriched uranium) is anyone’s guess at this point. It’s likely that no one truly knows, not even the Iranians. It will take significantly more time to get a clear answer.
That said, it may not matter much. Restarting their nuclear program in secret would likely be far more difficult now and would almost certainly be detected. Ideally, a political agreement will soon render the issue moot.
Animats · 4h ago
> The status of Iran’s nuclear sites (and more importantly, its stockpile of enriched uranium) is anyone’s guess at this point. It’s likely that no one truly knows, not even the Iranians.
The project is dispersed and hardened enough that a single attack probably wont' be a decisive blow.
The surprising thing is that Iran doesn't have an atomic bomb yet. Enrichment is the hard part. Building an A-bomb from enriched uranium is not that difficult. The technology is 80 years old and most of it is well known. It's no worse than building, say, an auto engine from scratch, something racing shops do routinely.
H-bombs are another matter. Those are hard.
alkyon · 1h ago
They suspended they nuclear program 20 years ago. Still they keep enriching uranium as a kind of insurance policy.
This is what US intelligence has been saying for years (as opposed to Israel who has vested interest in denying this).
LastTrain · 4h ago
I don’t follow. You say “no one can truely know”, what’s changed to make it almost certainly detected now?
barbazoo · 5h ago
If they weren't planning on making nukes before, they for sure are now. Good job everyone involved!
Just couldn't wait for diplomacy to play out.
stronglikedan · 5h ago
> Just couldn't wait for diplomacy to play out.
For something to play out, it has to start. For something to start, someone has to start it. When no one is willing to start it, then it will never play out.
unsnap_biceps · 5h ago
I'm sure that killing Iran's negotiator a few days before the negotiations were to take place helped deescalate the situation.
tartoran · 3h ago
Wait, they killed the Iranian negociator?
Tadpole9181 · 3h ago
When Israel first attacked, they not only killed top military leadership, but they targeted a dozen or so of Iran's top nuclear scientists and the chief negotiator, yes.
People don't call Israel a war criminal state for nothing. They don't want peace or negotiation. Just like they immediately bombed Iran after the ceasefire was declared. They just didn't want resistance for round 2.
gtsop · 5h ago
> For something to play out, it has to start. For something to start, someone has to start it. When no one is willing to start it, then it will never play out.
Very insightful, but the iranian minister had already started talks with the EU regarding the nukes[1], when Trump came in the bar and said "no you talk with us"[2]. So I don't know exactly the starting of what you're talking about.
They for sure got determined making the bomb after the diplomatic solution was bombed by Trump in his previous term.
IIRC, Iran appeared to comply with the terms of the agreement and once that was out of the window they no longer complied.
bitsage · 3h ago
Iran was hiding nuclear material during the duration JCPOA was active. They were declared in violation of the NPT by the IAEA recently for actions undertaken between 2009-2018.
mrtksn · 2h ago
You're right that the IAEA has indeed pointed to Iran's past undeclared nuclear material and activities, leading to NPT safeguard violations for the 2009-2018 period. However, it's also important to distinguish between those historical undeclared issues and the specific JCPOA compliance. For the duration it was active and before the US withdrawal, the IAEA consistently verified that Iran was adhering to its JCPOA commitments regarding its declared program. The argument is often that while those past issues were concerning, the JCPOA still provided a robust framework for monitoring Iran's active program, which was then dismantled
bitsage · 2h ago
Iran was objectively not in compliance though [1]. The IAEA just didn’t know they weren’t so they gave Iran a seal of approval. Israel had always claimed that Iran was hiding material, which convinced Trump to leave the JCPOA, but the IAEA could only corroborate it later.
Perhaps we should be making the argument that Trump shouldn’t have only gonna off of Israeli intel, but he ended up being correct that Iran wasn’t correctly reporting their enrichment stockpile, which was a provision of JCPOA. The reason why JCPOA wasn’t revived is actually because of Iran refusing to cooperate about what they did with the undeclared nuclear material.
Yeah, that's not very honest position. You have to decide if you want to squeeze them out or make things right.
If they hid things and the agreement wasn't just trashed, that could have been a scandal that gets resolved on the path to peace. It could happen for many reasons, maybe they don't trust the West to uphold their part and wanted an insurance policy, maybe it was division within. It doesn't matter that much, it's not like they made the bomb already and were about to hit once everyone lowers their guard.
Later what we had was Iran that was on the table, trying to play nice and that was destroyed probably because of the ego of a guy who couldn't handle to stick with the agreement signed by someone he hates.
This is just a repeat of what they said the likely outcome of using bunker busters on these facilities would be, likely using advanced modeling and simulation. There's not any new intel and if there were some sort of future tech, ground penetrating vision, they certainly wouldn't use it for public statements.
No comments yet
lenerdenator · 4h ago
It probably damaged them to some extent. Sensitive machines don't like dust and vibration. Bombs are known to cause a lot of both.
From a negotiation standpoint, you're in a weaker position if the enemy's killing machines can cross into your territory virtually unopposed and strike what should be three of the most secure locations in Iranian territory. Both the Israelis and US managed to seriously compromise Iranian territory recently, and while the Iranians could probably draw blood and destruction on American territory if they wanted to, they couldn't do it to the same extent.
Tadpole9181 · 3h ago
Everyone knows you don't kill America with bombs at this point. You use social media and fearmongering and crony capitalism to make the county rip itself apart and kill itself.
perihelions · 5h ago
> "“The ceasefire came without either Israel or the United States being able to destroy several key underground nuclear facilities, including near Natanz, Isfahan and Parchin,” Lewis said,
Here's more about these (not-widely-discussed) additional underground sites from Professor Lewis,
Can they try again? Build some kind of ultra-buster and use a Falcon Heavy to deliver it?
Obviously this has been presented as done, but it doesn't seem ideal to allow a situation where Iran gets nuclear weapons.
dantillberg · 5h ago
> Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed.
Is it even possible to "destroy" enriched uranium? It would seem to me that the most one might achieve by blowing it up with bombs is to spread it out a little bit.
mulmen · 5h ago
> Is it even possible to "destroy" enriched uranium?
Yes, obviously you can cause it to go critical.
But that wasn’t the question. A stockpile can be destroyed by simply redistributing the contents in a way they cannot be easily retrieved.
dantillberg · 4h ago
> cannot be easily retrieved
This is I guess where the analysis gets fuzzy, where honest assessments may vary widely.
My gut instinct is that enriched uranium blown up underground (assuming it was even there) would take at most around a year to recover, by turning the site into an open-pit uranium mine. The product wouldn't need to be re-enriched from scratch, as simpler mechanical filtering could probably isolate much of the already-enriched uranium.
But perhaps it would be much harder.
mulmen · 2h ago
There’s no state change in the enrichment process. It’s literally just mechanically filtering isotopes.
The point is it is possible to destroy a stockpile without destroying the contents of the stockpile.
If you have to turn the site into an open pit mine then I am comfortable calling that a destroyed stockpile.
This kind of strike will only ever delay the process. There’s no decisively preventing anyone from enriching uranium because the laws of physics are universal.
dzhiurgis · 25m ago
US should’ve just contaminated area slightly enough so that cleanup is impossible. Same outcome and 100% guaranteed success.
bitsage · 3h ago
Are people really going to pick and choose which unsubstantiated reports[1] to believe instead of just waiting for actual proof? The narrative has shifted with breakneck speed from “WW3” to “it was pointless anyways”.
Worth it to keep in mind as well, that Iran was committed under the NPT to limit nuclear development to non-weapons based usage. They were inspected regularly by UN bodies like the IAEA and the conclusions of our own intelligence agencies did not support the assertion that they were developing a weapon.
They were using it to support a legitimate nuclear energy and radiotheraputics industry. They are in the part of the planet that will be most impacted by climate warming, so nuclear is critical for them to support baseline power needs.
The United States striking these sites throws the entire international system of non-proliferation into question. If there is no commitment any country can make to any system of governance that allows for peaceful development of nuclear energy, there is no controlling nuclear weapons development and proliferation.
Nowhere in this CNN brief are we informed about whether the sites were or were not used for weapons development. If we take the lessons of mainstream media's coverage of the Iraq war, it is likely CNN is stating this because their owners have been told that it would be better for their bottom line to manufacture consent for a second round of strikes than to preserve the President's assertion that the strikes were successful.
votepaunchy · 4h ago
There are no civilian uses for these large quantities of 60% enriched uranium.
deftnerd · 3h ago
Civilian uses? Perhaps not, but Iran has always wanted to have a respected navy. Compact nuclear reactors like the type used in submarines with nuclear reactors for their power production require 90%+ enriched uranium. That's one very plausible use of HEU that isn't just "they want to build a bomb".
7e · 2h ago
A submarine is a good place to hide a breeder reactor. Far from any detectors.
Tronno · 4h ago
> Karoline Leavitt: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
All the juicy intel is right here in this press statement. The bombs struck bullseye and killed satire dead.
HankB99 · 3h ago
I'd like to emphasize "Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets" because I don;t and I suppose anyone not intimately familiar with this particular munition and the task to which it has been applied does either.
She's just bloviating which makes her the perfect mouthpiece for Trump.
kashunstva · 4h ago
> “…the brave fighter pilots…”
Is Ms. Leavitt unaware that the B-2 is a heavy strategic _bomber_?
nopelynopington · 3h ago
Everything out of her mouth is a lie anyway. You have to calculate the opposite of her statement and that's the truth
So:
"This correct assessment is accurate and was not classified as ‘top secret’ and leaked to CNN by an known, high level competent person in the intelligence community. The leaking of this assessment is not an attempt to demean President Trump, or discredit the nervous bomber copilots who conducted a failed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Nobody knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs imperfectly on their targets: so we're not sure.”
TheAlchemist · 3h ago
"Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan of New York said on X on Tuesday that “Trump just cancelled a classified House briefing on the Iran strikes with zero explanation. The real reason? He claims he destroyed ‘all nuclear facilities and capability;’ his team knows they can’t back up his bluster and BS.”"
This one is quite telling...
If this assessment is true, then I would expect the situation to get really bad in less than a year. What would you do if you were Khamenei ? Trump already said he doesn't raelly care if he needs to do a 'regime change'. The only way to ensure that this doesn't happen, given the dramatic air superiority of Israel / US, is to get nukes and get them quickly... What are his other realistic options ?
anonnon · 2h ago
> The only way to ensure that this doesn't happen, given the dramatic air superiority of Israel / US, is to get nukes and get them quickly... What are his other realistic options ?
Disband his nuclear program altogether? The only reason Iran is being bombed at all, at least by the US, is because of their nuclear program. Even when the Houthis, their sponsored proxy, were attacking US shipping, the US never took direct military action Iran.
TheAlchemist · 2h ago
That would be an option, but given how Middle East work, you're either strong or you will be bombed sooner or later.
Sure they could just make peace with Israel and that may be a solution, but not a realistic one. In the realistic solution, if they don't get a nuke, they will share the same fate as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon...
anonnon · 1h ago
> if they don't get a nuke they will share the same fate as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon...
The Syrian government (which had and used WMDs) was ultimately toppled by its own citizens, after losing support from Russia, wasn't it? And what is the "fate" Lebanon? What's changed, besides Hezbollah's capabilities being substantially degraded? It's the same state with the same constitution, isn't it?
TheAlchemist · 51m ago
True.
However all of those countries were bombed into submission or chaos (Israel destroyed most of Syria military equipmenet just after the fall of Al Assad).
7e · 2h ago
North Korea has the bomb and hasn't been bombed at all. It's a great deterrent. Now look at Ukraine, which gave up its nukes in exchange for promises of security, and how those were totally violated by Russia.
anonnon · 2h ago
> North Korea
is a client state of China, and it also possess a massive array of conventional artillery in range of Seoul. And since the Korean War, which we now know conclusively that NK started, almost every overt act of aggression between the two Koreas has been perpetrated by the North against the South, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858
selfselfgo · 5h ago
I don’t support the bombing of Iran, but where is the US media that reflects my opinions? I will literally throw money at any publication using the “T” word to describe Trump’s actions here.
nemomarx · 5h ago
If you were around for the last bush terms you'll know that anti war media is going to be restricted to small circulation news papers and blogs. Any large TV channel will follow the white house on this kind of thing, with varying flavors of reluctance about the necessity of it or exaggeration of the threat posed by WMDs, etc.
Try small news sites on the scale of 404media or social media commentators you trust, I guess.
idle_zealot · 5h ago
We might not be in this mess if US media weren't utterly compromised. I don't know how we get back to a world where there are news outlets with principles, but the free market of ideas doesn't seem to be working out.
stevenwoo · 4h ago
It was not a free market of ideas but a free market of media outlets and those with the biggest wallets bought most all of the media outlets.
idle_zealot · 4h ago
That's certainly the primary driver of the state of media outlets today, but good ideas don't win on even ground either. The nuances of reality cannot compete with simple narratives for human attention and buy-in. Gatekeeping and general respect for intellectual integrity are necessary cultural components that have been eroded, and it will not be easy to reestablish them.
phendrenad2 · 4h ago
commondreams.org? It's not as good as it once was - it's full of a lot of defeatism and fluff these days.
FirmwareBurner · 5h ago
>I don’t support the bombing of Iran, but where is the US media that reflects my opinions?
I would assume that this thing is entirely compartmentalized, so to destroy everything you will need a bomb in every room.
According to wikipedia, US made around 20 of those bombs and Trump used 14 of those. So %70 of the stockpile is gone in one go.
Especially on the main site they dropped 3 bobs per strike location, so at best they could have destroyed 2 compartments with 6 bombs. If those were able to penetrate of course.
Honestly, it looks like it was a show like the one where Trump fights professional fighters on the ring. Just significantly more expensive.
Maybe they should just generate those images in AI, would be much more cost effective propaganda.
https://nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/iran-uranium-stoc...
According to Israeli media, it is not known whether the Fordow underground nuclear complex has been destroyed.
Netanyahu has already declared victory, but Iran's nuclear capabilities will likely be completely restarted, most likely within a few years or some estimations says months.
There is no doubt that during that time Iran will strengthen its aviation, intelligence and reconnaissance, which have now failed drastically. "Regime change" goal for Israel also failed.
Many more Mossad agents and collaborators will fall in Iran over the next few months as IRGC begins its crack down and Israel will surely lose a huge portion of their main weapon. Further TRUMP declaring "no regime change" today, made this matter worse.
Iran practically has a script for its problems now. Israel has learned what will happen when Iran gets thousands of their hypersonic missiles and fixes the problem with the lack of launchers which Iran will certainly continue to produce.
Only a ceasefire has been achieved, but there will certainly be a second round (likely by Israel again once more intel is gathered), because a war like this never officially ended.
More importantly, let's not forget who paid the price at the end? As always, innocent Israelis and Iranians who never knew each other or had a problem with died.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/iran-strikes-n...
1. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858895 2. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858619
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/iran-strikes-n...
You don't have to blow something up to destroy it.
The depth assumptions for the facility are often with a shallow gradient roads for the entrance and exits, but there is no need for the gradient to be shallow.
Is this where we are? Just making up technobabble to glorify the US war machine in a supposedly intellectual forum? All the while the white house says the report is real, but they disagree with the contents of their own intelligence report because "we want big bomb make big boom work good"?
After 25 years it has become abundantly clear that Iraq (the concept) is what the US is, and what it deserves.
I really doubt this is very linear.
You are told the B2 can carry a certain payload weight.
You are told the B2 has a certain operational ceiling.
You are told the bombs are a certain weight.
You are told the bombs are made from a certain material.
You are told the bombs contain a certain type of explosive.
Everything you know about this device and its capabilities came from an organization that has every motivation to publish specs that are just enough to raise the eyebrows of the people this device is supposed to scare hell out of, but they have less than zero motivation to publish specs that speak to maximum capabilities.
So while your calculations might be accurate for the component values you gave it, your component values of your calculation are not accurate, because all you know is what you were told.
You need a few bombs and some places of varying geology to set them off. You take those data points, cross reference with all your historical knowledge and should be able to say whether a bunker of given construction a given depth under a given geology can be breached.
I hate how allergic to just testing and prototyping things modern engineering culture is.
Yeah, the bomb is expensive, but you gotta test it too so if you do it all right you get two birds with one stone.
Never mind the fact that bomb damage assessment is one of the most difficult problems in photograph interpretation -- it's hard enough when the target is above ground, worse when it isn't.
The US Navy's torpedo station in Newport, RI produced torpedos that were really prone to failure during the first few years of WW2.
IIRC, the problem persisted so long because an admiral in charge refused to provide enough torpedos for adequate testing.
(Sorry if there are any errors here, I can't easily fact check at the moment.)
it's the ci/cd of american foreign poliyics
Of the guys I graduated with, half died either in Iraq or Afghanistan between 2002 and 2006, or killed themselves shortly after returning home. The other half are broken. Either physically or mentally.
We cannot do that again. That we're involved in this shit show is an absolute travesty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-wp4oJ2LY
That said, it may not matter much. Restarting their nuclear program in secret would likely be far more difficult now and would almost certainly be detected. Ideally, a political agreement will soon render the issue moot.
The project is dispersed and hardened enough that a single attack probably wont' be a decisive blow.
The surprising thing is that Iran doesn't have an atomic bomb yet. Enrichment is the hard part. Building an A-bomb from enriched uranium is not that difficult. The technology is 80 years old and most of it is well known. It's no worse than building, say, an auto engine from scratch, something racing shops do routinely.
H-bombs are another matter. Those are hard.
This is what US intelligence has been saying for years (as opposed to Israel who has vested interest in denying this).
Just couldn't wait for diplomacy to play out.
For something to play out, it has to start. For something to start, someone has to start it. When no one is willing to start it, then it will never play out.
People don't call Israel a war criminal state for nothing. They don't want peace or negotiation. Just like they immediately bombed Iran after the ceasefire was declared. They just didn't want resistance for round 2.
Very insightful, but the iranian minister had already started talks with the EU regarding the nukes[1], when Trump came in the bar and said "no you talk with us"[2]. So I don't know exactly the starting of what you're talking about.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/international-relations/t...
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/prospects-diplomacy-dim-afte...
IIRC, Iran appeared to comply with the terms of the agreement and once that was out of the window they no longer complied.
Perhaps we should be making the argument that Trump shouldn’t have only gonna off of Israeli intel, but he ended up being correct that Iran wasn’t correctly reporting their enrichment stockpile, which was a provision of JCPOA. The reason why JCPOA wasn’t revived is actually because of Iran refusing to cooperate about what they did with the undeclared nuclear material.
1. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-25.pd...
If they hid things and the agreement wasn't just trashed, that could have been a scandal that gets resolved on the path to peace. It could happen for many reasons, maybe they don't trust the West to uphold their part and wanted an insurance policy, maybe it was division within. It doesn't matter that much, it's not like they made the bomb already and were about to hit once everyone lowers their guard.
Later what we had was Iran that was on the table, trying to play nice and that was destroyed probably because of the ego of a guy who couldn't handle to stick with the agreement signed by someone he hates.
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From a negotiation standpoint, you're in a weaker position if the enemy's killing machines can cross into your territory virtually unopposed and strike what should be three of the most secure locations in Iranian territory. Both the Israelis and US managed to seriously compromise Iranian territory recently, and while the Iranians could probably draw blood and destruction on American territory if they wanted to, they couldn't do it to the same extent.
Here's more about these (not-widely-discussed) additional underground sites from Professor Lewis,
https://bsky.app/profile/armscontrolwonk.bsky.social/post/3l...
Obviously this has been presented as done, but it doesn't seem ideal to allow a situation where Iran gets nuclear weapons.
Is it even possible to "destroy" enriched uranium? It would seem to me that the most one might achieve by blowing it up with bombs is to spread it out a little bit.
Yes, obviously you can cause it to go critical.
But that wasn’t the question. A stockpile can be destroyed by simply redistributing the contents in a way they cannot be easily retrieved.
This is I guess where the analysis gets fuzzy, where honest assessments may vary widely.
My gut instinct is that enriched uranium blown up underground (assuming it was even there) would take at most around a year to recover, by turning the site into an open-pit uranium mine. The product wouldn't need to be re-enriched from scratch, as simpler mechanical filtering could probably isolate much of the already-enriched uranium.
But perhaps it would be much harder.
The point is it is possible to destroy a stockpile without destroying the contents of the stockpile.
If you have to turn the site into an open pit mine then I am comfortable calling that a destroyed stockpile.
This kind of strike will only ever delay the process. There’s no decisively preventing anyone from enriching uranium because the laws of physics are universal.
1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-intel-a...
They were using it to support a legitimate nuclear energy and radiotheraputics industry. They are in the part of the planet that will be most impacted by climate warming, so nuclear is critical for them to support baseline power needs.
The United States striking these sites throws the entire international system of non-proliferation into question. If there is no commitment any country can make to any system of governance that allows for peaceful development of nuclear energy, there is no controlling nuclear weapons development and proliferation.
Nowhere in this CNN brief are we informed about whether the sites were or were not used for weapons development. If we take the lessons of mainstream media's coverage of the Iraq war, it is likely CNN is stating this because their owners have been told that it would be better for their bottom line to manufacture consent for a second round of strikes than to preserve the President's assertion that the strikes were successful.
All the juicy intel is right here in this press statement. The bombs struck bullseye and killed satire dead.
She's just bloviating which makes her the perfect mouthpiece for Trump.
Is Ms. Leavitt unaware that the B-2 is a heavy strategic _bomber_?
So:
"This correct assessment is accurate and was not classified as ‘top secret’ and leaked to CNN by an known, high level competent person in the intelligence community. The leaking of this assessment is not an attempt to demean President Trump, or discredit the nervous bomber copilots who conducted a failed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Nobody knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs imperfectly on their targets: so we're not sure.”
This one is quite telling...
If this assessment is true, then I would expect the situation to get really bad in less than a year. What would you do if you were Khamenei ? Trump already said he doesn't raelly care if he needs to do a 'regime change'. The only way to ensure that this doesn't happen, given the dramatic air superiority of Israel / US, is to get nukes and get them quickly... What are his other realistic options ?
Disband his nuclear program altogether? The only reason Iran is being bombed at all, at least by the US, is because of their nuclear program. Even when the Houthis, their sponsored proxy, were attacking US shipping, the US never took direct military action Iran.
Sure they could just make peace with Israel and that may be a solution, but not a realistic one. In the realistic solution, if they don't get a nuke, they will share the same fate as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon...
The Syrian government (which had and used WMDs) was ultimately toppled by its own citizens, after losing support from Russia, wasn't it? And what is the "fate" Lebanon? What's changed, besides Hezbollah's capabilities being substantially degraded? It's the same state with the same constitution, isn't it?
However all of those countries were bombed into submission or chaos (Israel destroyed most of Syria military equipmenet just after the fall of Al Assad).
is a client state of China, and it also possess a massive array of conventional artillery in range of Seoul. And since the Korean War, which we now know conclusively that NK started, almost every overt act of aggression between the two Koreas has been perpetrated by the North against the South, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858
Try small news sites on the scale of 404media or social media commentators you trust, I guess.
X/Twitter is that thing.