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.
Try small news sites on the scale of 404media or social media commentators you trust, I guess.
X/Twitter is that thing.
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.
Here's more about these (not-widely-discussed) additional underground sites from Professor Lewis,
https://bsky.app/profile/armscontrolwonk.bsky.social/post/3l...
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).
All the juicy intel is right here in this press statement. The bombs struck bullseye and killed satire dead.
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.”
She's just bloviating which makes her the perfect mouthpiece for Trump.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-intel-a...
Obviously this has been presented as done, but it doesn't seem ideal to allow a situation where Iran gets nuclear weapons.
cluckindan•7h ago
everfrustrated•7h ago
tonyedgecombe•7h ago
estebank•7h ago
gtsop•6h ago
it's the ci/cd of american foreign poliyics
mcphage•2h ago
I_Lorem•3h ago
123yawaworht456•7h ago
Loughla•7h ago
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•6h ago
heraldgeezer•6h ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-wp4oJ2LY
cjbgkagh•7h ago
buildbot•7h ago
potato3732842•7h ago
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.
CoastalCoder•6h ago
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.)
PaulHoule•6h ago
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.
cjbgkagh•7h ago
influx•7h ago
cjbgkagh•6h ago
kcplate•5h ago
cjbgkagh•3h ago
kcplate•2h ago
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.
cjbgkagh•1h ago
While skunkworks are certainly a thing they’re not hiding some Star Trek antigravity device, physics is still physics and physical limits are physical limits. Look at the Otto Celera 500L if you want to see what attacking physical limits looks like. It’s an engineering problem and the fundamentals are well understood. The real magic is in creating the money to pay for it.
kcplate•1h ago
If you can calculate the depth and damage those bombs did based on wing size and airspeed (which technically is another parameter you really don’t know, but are relying on what you are told) you ought to be working for the government.
buildbot•4h ago
I really doubt this is very linear.
larrled•6h ago
kcplate•5h ago
RationPhantoms•6h ago
cjbgkagh•6h ago
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•3h ago
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.
barbazoo•7h ago
votepaunchy•6h ago
barbazoo•4h ago
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/iran-strikes-n...
bitsage•4h ago
barbazoo•4h ago
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/iran-strikes-n...
bitsage•3h ago
1. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858895 2. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858619
bamboozled•1h ago
m3kw9•6h ago
ramshanker•6h ago
mgiampapa•6h ago
LastTrain•6h ago
mgiampapa•5h ago
mrtksn•5h ago
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.
FuriouslyAdrift•5h ago
You don't have to blow something up to destroy it.
swat535•3h ago
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.