The U.S. just bombed Iran, at three sites.
Let’s hope to God it was a kill-shot.
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My guess is that no-one within missile range of Iran wants Iran to have nuclear weapons. It is quite possible that China & Russia are quietly advising Iran to cut a deal and stop the conflict.
Putting on my tin-foil hat, it is quite possible that this is all pre-arranged theater. With Iran’s agreement, the US bombs some facilities in Iran. Iran with US agreement then hits some US asset. And then everyone agrees to cut a deal – honor preserved.
But who knows what Saudi Arabia or Pakistan will do? And then there are those crazy Euros as wild cards. No plan survives contact with reality.
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Per Truth Social, Trump will address the nation at 10 PM.
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“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
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What do you mean?
Just in case there’s any doubt on what the Iranian regime was celebrating yesterday, it’s the destruction of civilian infrastructure:
This is the bottom of the information funnel: this is what their propaganda has been aiming for. This is why Israel has some support even among the Muslim countries.
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An interesting article from a Middle East publication:
Exclusive: Iran given advance notice as US insisted attack on nuclear sites is ‘one-off’
“… Amwaj.media has learned that Washington notified Tehran of the strikes. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a high-ranking Iranian political source confirmed that the Trump administration on June 21 conveyed that it did not seek an all-out confrontation, and only intended to strike the Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites. Importantly, the senior source also confirmed that the targeted sites were evacuated, with “most” of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium kept in secure locations. …”
If this is correct (and who knows), we should expect some fairly irrelevant Iranian strike on an empty US base, followed by quiet negotiations and a wind-down in Israeli-Iranian attacks on each other.
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See Iraq, war on terror.
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Only avid consumers of Regime propaganda could possibly imagine that this attack will terminate Iran’s nuclear capability. The best-case scenario is for this madness to end now, with Iran making a token response and some agreement between the GAE and Iran to limit their access to enriched fissile material. The worst case is the GAE sinks into yet another quagmire, wasting unconscionable amounts of blood and treasure, to which @BlackPrince alluded. Only this time it will be much worse since Iran is not some a weak, divided country like Iraq or a bunch of goatherds like Afghanistan. And for a bunch of goatherds, the Afghans did a pretty nice job of kicking out two empires.
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My hypothesis currently is that Israel presented the US with a difficult choice – either the US attacks the key Iranian nuclear sites with conventional weapons (which only the US has), or Israel will attack them with nuclear weapons. No-one wants Israel to use nuclear weapons.
The US consulted with Iran, Russia, and China. All agreed that the best option was for a US conventional attack, followed by de-escalation between Israel & Iran. Iran was given plenty of time to shut down operations at the sites and take other precautions, and then left the door open for the US to attack. China & Russia got the opportunity to observe B2s in action, and prepare their own systems against future attacks. Iran will get a chance to do some performative response, and then things will wind down as China applies pressure to Iran and Russia applies pressure to Israel.
China wants the Middle East conflict brought to a close, since it cannot afford to see oil supplies from the Persian Gulf interrupted. Russia, to the contrary, would be happy to see those oil supplies to Europe disrupted, and would enjoy the negotiating advantage for the Ukrainian situation of Euros coming to Russia on bended knee to be allowed to buy Russian oil, no matter how high the price. But Russia cannot afford to see that conflict spread beyond the Middle East. And of course neither China nor Russia wants to see the current Iranian regime with nuclear weapons.
The real world is messy, and sometimes people have to do what they need to do – and never tell a soul the rest of the story.
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Unlikely for many reasons.
Israel probably has air burstable gun-type uranium devices in the 20-40kt range.
Deliverable implosion plutonium devices, hydrogen bombs, and then nuclear penetrators historically require testing that Israel has not done.
Perhaps they’ve built a couple without testing, but it would be an absurd risk to attempt to use them.
Practically, only a nuclear/thermonuclear penetrator would have been more effective than the MOP. Just remember that footings of the Trinity tower survived the test 100 feet above and buildings in Hiroshima directly below partially survived!
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Just wondered what you were referring to. . You’re probably right.
Oh idk. Maybe anybody who wants to swim in the ocean of government. HAS to develop gills and fins in order to survive. They either change or die, and from then on, they aren’t like the rest of us earthlings.
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“…do what they need to do and never tell another soul the rest of the story”:
Oh lord yes! That’s being a grown-up. One who’s gotten, y’know, really tall.
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I can’t disagree with you about that absurd risk – but what about the other absurd risk of Israel launching attacks on much bigger Iran to stymie Iran’s nuclear weapons program if Israel knew before it started that it lacked the means to destroy the targeted sites?
Trying to square that circle – perhaps the horrible choice Israel presented to the US was either the US attacks the nuclear sites with conventional weapons or Israel attacks downtown Tehran with nuclear weapons? I can imagine that everyone (including China & Russia as well as the US and Iran) would agree it was worth doing almost anything to avoid Israel firing off a nuke. But I don’t expect we will ever hear the inside story.
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If that’s true (I have no idea if it is, but I think it’s certainly a real possibility), what would that say about the US/Israel relationship?
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Ding, ding, ding! And this is why I would actively discourage any young person from joining the military—they will never know the real reasons why they’ve been ordered to kill and put their lives on the line (and if they knew the real reasons, they’d probably be horrified and totally disgusted).
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Indeed. Actually, I think everyone had a pretty good idea what they’re fighting for when the Pride flag was flying over the White House and American embassies.
Years ago, Pat Buchanan wrote, “If we do not cease to be an empire, we will cease to be a republic.” Well, we’re now well past that point. I’ll be interested to see what comes next.
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I wonder what will happen if Russia lives up to this…
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It is just Medvedev, just words. Notice that even Medvedev did NOT say that Russia was prepared to give Iran nuclear weapons – probably because Russia recognizes the possibility that Shia expecting the Apocalypse might fire that nuclear warhead back at Russia.
Anyway, there are over 40 countries running nuclear reactors today. What percentage of the global population could even name 40 countries? The nuclear genie is well & truly out of the bottle. The technology is available to anyone with the funds to pay for it.
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Why doesn’t Turkey invade and annex part of Iran?