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Trump has bombed Iran's nuclear sites, using B2 bombers dropping 30,000-pound massive ordinance penetrators. All aircraft have successfully cleared Iranian airspace, and Trump is claiming that all three nuclear sites were wiped out. No word that I've seen of a counter-attack from Iran, as yet.
AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment. Fetterman thinks it was the right move. Both are, I suppose, on brand.
My feelings are mixed. I absolutely do not want us signing up for another two decades of invading and inviting the middle east, and of all the places I'd pick with a gun to my head, Iran would be dead last. I do not think our military is prepared for a serious conflict at the moment, because I think there's a pretty good likelihood that a lot of our equipment became suddenly obsolete two or three years ago, and also because I'm beginning to strongly suspect that World War 3 has already started and we've all just just been a bit slow catching on. That said, I am really not a fan of Iran, and while I could be persuaded to gamble on Iran actually acquiring nukes, it's still a hell of a gamble, and the Israelis wiping Iran's air defense grid made this about the cheapest alternative imaginable. I have zero confidence that diplomacy was ever going to work; it's pretty clear to me that Iran wanted nukes, and that in the best case this would result in considerable proliferation and upheaval. Now, assuming the strikes worked, that issue appears to be off the table for the short and medium terms. That... seems like a good thing? Maybe?
I'm hoping what appears to me to be fairly intense pressure to avoid an actual invasion keeps American boots of Iranian soil. As with zorching an Iranian general in Iraq during Trump's first term, this seems like a fairly reasonable gamble, but if we get another forever war out of this, that would be unmitigated disaster.
Has the USG directly confirmed the use of MOP? I’m asking seriously. I only see reports where it’s implied based on the context of us having spent the last week talking about them. The X community seems to doubt they were used. There is a lot of speculation that this was another telegraphed strike that allows US and Iran to save face and deescalate.
I have zero confidence in my ability to know what actually happened here and make any predictions about the future.
I decided to check in on plebbit over at /moderatepolitics/. What a total embarrassment. There’s 1000 comments there all basically saying that Iran has been denuclearized, defanged, and is is either about to collapse or lash out with mass casualty events against the USA. As I said, I suppose that’s possible. Perhaps we did fully destroy Fardow with 6 MOP and it was a perfect op. But the lack of even entertaining other possibilities is sad, but not surprising.
It's not possible for a MOAP to destroy a facility 100m deep in rock. It's intended to strike bunkers 40m deep in soils.
You would need a lot of successive strikes, possibly with something in between else to remove rubble and allow deeper penetration.
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Yes. 14 MOPs from 7 B-2s. I don't think any bomb damage imagery has been released, however.
Watching the DR apply the same "America worst" logic formerly typically used by the antiwar left is certainly amusing.
I was quite annoyed that I got more details quicker from the Daily Mail than I did most US outlets. Which included satellite images, though I can’t remember the provenance.
With that said I think if you look closely at the statements and rhetoric that we’ve heard so far, plus the physical facts, it seems highly likely this bombing run wasn’t enough for full destruction. They would probably need to pound it for a week to be more sure. Clearly the Trump admin is banking on Iranian peace seeking - I think they have a decent chance at it, but far from certain.
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I get the impression that the DR largely is the antiwar left, who got kicked out of the left because reasons.
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The woke right strikes again.
How is that the woke right?
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BBC has a satellite photo, showing six entrance points at Fordow. I say "entrance points" rather than "craters", because you won't see the true extent of the damage from above ground.
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There are only 3 things being thrown out of this airplane in that kind of operation that make sense. They are by order of letality MOPs, Nukes and Chuck Norris. It wasn't nukes. We would know. It wasn't chuck Norris - you would only need 1 plane, not 6. And there won't be a need for in flight refueling - when they run out of fuel he will just get off the aircraft and push it to the destination. So it leaves MOPs.
And inside those facilities there is a shitload of nasty stuff that could create what sjw call toxic working environment. So I think that even minor damage could cascade into unsalvigably contaminated facility.
There is always possibility that iran has backup facility and some sort of top secret clandestine protocol that they will pull all of the enriched stuff to it with first signs if danger. And they already did it two weeks ago. Whether they are capable of pulling such tight opsec is exercise left to the reader.
The activity of U-235 seems to be around 80MBq/kg. Not something to keep under your pillow, but also not something where any reasonably quantity will kill you within minutes.
Sure, for the centrifuges, you need UF6, but even that becomes solid below 56 degree centigrade.
To get to that you would also require hydrofluoric acid and fluorine, both of which are definitely nasty, but also things you can clean up even if you care about the environment or the life expectancy of your cleaners, which likely are not issues for Iran.
Hitting the enriched uranium would be hard in any case. The Iranians anticipated the possibility of an attack, so the obvious thing to do would be to dig a kilometer long tunnel, and have a few people whose job it is to carry the good stuff to a randomly selected point in the tunnel every half hour. Unless half of your guards work for Mossad (in which case you have a bigger problem), this should work well enough.
I think the main thing to hit would be the centrifuges. They are not very portable, require a ton of power and supervision and are nothing that the Iranians can easily mass-produce, so losing them would really hurt them.
Of course, we do not know if the attacks actually hit them.
In the long run, I expect the Iranians to win this one, because it is much easier for them to tunnel through another few 100m of bedrock than it will be for the US to bomb through that.
The alternative would be to settle for bombing the entrances of access tunnels whenever they pop up, but that would be a long-term commitment.
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Well, clearly the other stealth bombers are diversions to disguise Chuck Norris's actual entry point for as long as possible.
Umm... The common between Chuck Norris and the necrophiliac is that every point is an entry point
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What for? He'll intercept any missiles with his bare hands. Or feet, as it were.
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It seems unlikely that they could do this without being seen by Israeli or US assets. You can hide stuff underground but when you start moving it, it's visible.
They have 500kg of the good stuff. That is 25 liters of uranium. It takes two plain vans. In the chaos after a strike with all the ambulances, contractors that repair and so on it is easy to be lost in the fray IF you have guys that can keep their mouths shut and their signatures are not too visible. You only need couple of embedded guys there with the proper credentials to take over the uranium when it hits the fan.
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