If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading up on the GBU-57 "bunker buster" bomb, because it is some Merrie Melodies Acme brand munitions. It's deliberately as heavy as they can make a bomb, not with explosives but just with mass. They should have shaped it like a giant piano.
For those who didn't know: There are multiple charges of corruption against him, which he is probably guilty of. But as long as he can lead Israel in a state of emergency, he can have those delayed, or perhaps even work around them.
This new war against Iran also diverts attention away from what is happening in Gaza. The starvation has entered a new critical phase. The populace has been concentrated, so they can no longer work the fields. The number of sites that are handing out food aid have been greatly reduced, and dozens of people are killed every day by Israeli soldiers while they are trying to get to the sites.
It's a weird one. I don't disagree with your post, still, what is "approved" nukes? A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them. Then Israel also got them, also "unauthorized", but countries who don't mind pretend they don't know.
In the end there is no authorized and unauthorized nukes, only a calculus of power.
Didn't Netanyahu perjure himself to congress about iraq's wmds two decades? Isn't that grounds for arrest? It's amazing how our media never mentions that netanyahu is a habitual liar when they push netanyahu's iran's wmds spiel.
At this point our media companies are israel's PR department. Fox news should be banned like RT for being a foreign mouthpiece.
We couldn’t stop North Korea with threats of violence but we did manage to stop Iran for almost 50 years through diplomacy. That’s all pissed down the drain now.
If the regime survives, now Iranian people have a very good reasons to ignore its shortcomings and tyranny and Do a proper sacrifice. It’s a natural resources rich nation of 90 million people. If they want to get serious, they can get serious.
Edit: 3 months, and source: https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-weapon-2...
The GBU-57 is dope. Really curious to see how well it worked here
[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/23528/irans-stockpile-of--low...
Fordow sits beneath a thick cap on a limestone–dolomite mountain, whose compressive strength rivals granite, and the facility is at least at 90 to 100 meters. If a warhead detonates the carbonate stack fractures and absorbs the pressure wave, calcite dissociation soaks up heat, keeping the cavern wall below all braking thresholds and leaving the target probably intact.
And they had hundreds of trucks in and out the days before the attack: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/22/satellite-images-show-activi...
Maybe Iran will not retaliate, not because the attack was successful but because it was not.
This one is probably the highest resolution, publicly available picture post attack. It's notable how the fence is still perfectly aligned...
https://static-cdn.toi-media.com/www/uploads/2025/06/AFP__20...
We're working on it, 10-20 more years of legal proceedings and it's done.
The US posturing against Iran dates back to the Cold War era when Iran was tagged as “northern tier” state, and any nationalist moves inside looked like a Soviet opening, and a threat to the Anglo stronghold of Iran's Oil.
Who authorized Manhattan Project?
I immediately thought about Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.... wasted youth
It’s odd to have a country that illegally proliferated treating a neighbor who isn’t doing that yet as the greatest threat to world piece. Backed by the only country that’s used nuclear weapons in anger.
It’s very possible that in a decade the Us will be at war in Iran. Trump and Netanyahu will be off the world stage. The cost to the US will be thousands of lives and several trillion and China will have taken Taiwan while we aren’t capable of stopping them.
These wars always seem to start well because destroying things is the easy but.
We don’t know if we’ve done much damage to the buried facilities. Bunker busters don’t dive very deep, they can be deflected via engineering, and concrete is cheap.
Conflict like this are what will definitively end “The American Century” and we are currently witnessing that.
You cannot bomb your way to peaceful coexistence.
It's also very likely, and so far an exact figure is yet to be reported, that several smart, kind, and non-hostile scientists working towards a clean energy program were killed by this strike.
Celebrating death for the sake of a hypothetical is a very dangerous attitude, and is frankly repugnant to see as a top comment.
As for the facts, and not just the narrative: 60% enrichment is not considered weapons-grade enrichment, and it is not illegal under the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Therefore, today's attack is an illegal act of aggression against another country, violating international law. Those are the facts.
Did you have to add that qualifier because otherwise there's at least one other nuclear power in Middle East that regularly bombs civilians.
These people don’t deserve fair trial
Source: Because I said so
—-
"Might makes right"
"The stronger always blames the weaker"
"My need of food is guilt enough of yours" ("Ты виноват уж тем, что хочется мне кушать")
This is going to hit gas prices, the markets and US security considerations all in order to help keep the current Israeli leadership out of Israeli prisons. Bad move.
A lot of people saying this, what would this actually entail? My money is much more on this being a "1 and done" exchange. Iran poses very little threat now, launchers being taken out everyday, leadership chain wiped out, seemingly no other Iran allies getting pulled into the fold
There will continue to be ordinance flying here and there of course (probably until the end of time being the ME), but Iran has been weakened to the point that Wall Street has more than likely written it off for the near future.
Heh. I made more in a day than I get paid in month for my job trading the opposite. The Middle East hardly effects American gas prices.
> "A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the American strike on the Fordo site did not destroy the heavily fortified facility but said the strike had severely damaged it, taking it “off the table.” The person noted that even 12 bunker-busting bombs could not destroy the site."
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/22/world/middlee... ("Assessing the Damage at the Nuclear Sites the U.S. Attacked")
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/world/middleeast/iran-for... ("Iran’s Fordo Site Said to Look Severely Damaged, Not Destroyed")
Linked articles also have new satellite imagery from Maxar and Planet.
The US and Israel were lucky that Iran built their Fordow plant only 50 meters underground. What will the US do when Iran rebuilds it far deeper? They have a coal mine going 1200 meters deep.
Iran is technologically far more capable than North Korea, which ultimately succeeded in building the bomb. The US knows this and wouldn't have started this war if Israel hadn't done it first.
The first Iran deal in 2015 was not perfect, but it would have provided some guarantees for 15 years. If Iran is determined, how many years has this bombing bought? If I had to guess, Israel is back calling doom ~3 years when the US is having new elections.
Israel doesn't want the removal of the Iran sanctions, why would they? This means whatever deal the US makes with Iran, it's not going to be good enough for Israel.
Most likely Israel would attack even before such a facility became operational. It’s not like they haven’t done preemptive strikes before.
And then what? They have nuclear weapons? Which is what Israel and the US doesn't want.
Also, Iran didn't even let inspector into all of the enrichment sites they had, so they were breaking the original deal with Obama from the start.
Sounds like learned helplessness. This is only allowed as long as the governed permit it.
> the whole reason why you get elected is because you were against it.
Not every politician is reducible to a single, cliche hivemind. When the person lacks integrity and a record of telling the truth, it's unwise to believe they will keep all of their promises.
USA is now an unreliable ally at best and the military industrial complex is a massive loser because of this switch.
Iran has massive earthquake risks. For reasons unassociated with nuclear bunkers they do a lot of research into (fibre, and other) strengthened cement construction. With obvious applications to their nuclear industry of course.
Another unrelated point, a significant number of Iranian civil engineering graduates are women. A somewhat dichotomous economy, when you consider the theocratic restrictions on costume and behaviour.
Iran does not have the same degree of sexist restrictions as eg Saudi Arabia. It's a very different climate from places where salafism is more common. Female education in particular is highly supported eg: https://x.com/khamenei_ir/status/1869369086142296490
I thought it was generally known that richer societies with me equal treatment - where people are generally more able to choose jobs they like rather than needing to take whatever's a ticket to a decent life - are the places with higher disparities in well-paying occupations?
Most certainly was. It's underground (Fordow is ~60m?) so it's either that or nukes.
What Iran does next depends on the extent of the damage. It could be nothing. It could be a token response. It could be escalation.
But so far Iran has been the only rational actor in this region. Iran has been attacked with justification. Anytime someone says "preemptive strike" they mean "attack without justification". Their responses have been measured, rational, justified and proportionate.
When Israel tried to previously escalate the conflict with Iran and drag the US into war with Iran, Iran just didn't take the bait. And this is despite Israel assassinating government officials, bombing Iranian embassies and bombing Iran for absolutely no reason.
I just realised that this bomb is not the same as the so called Mother of all bombs, which by the way has so far only been used once also by trump. That's the gbu 43. Why did they find it necessary to build an even bigger bomb? I wonder if they anticipated strikes on the me.
As to your other point iran seems to have a decent level of education. Building an entire home grown nuclear program under sanctions is impressive.
> It included a strike on the heavily-fortified Fordo nuclear site, according to Trump, which is located roughly 300 feet under a mountain about 100 miles south of Tehran. It's a move that Israel has been lobbying the U.S. to carry out, given that only the U.S. has the kind of powerful "bunker buster" bomb capable of reaching the site. Known as the GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator), the bomb can only be transported by one specific U.S. warplane, the B-2 stealth bomber, due to its immense 30,000 pound weight.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/21/nx-s1-5441127/iran-us-strike-...
Can I say again how deeply silly this munition is? What's special about a GBU-57 isn't its explosive force. It's that the bomb casing is made out of special high-density ultra-heavy steel; it's deliberately just a super heavy bomb with a delayed fuse. It is literally like them dropping cartoon anvils out of the sky.
From what I've read, the idea is that they keep dropping bombs into the same bomb-hole that previous sorties left, each round of bombs drilling deeper into the structure.
But will that happen? I doubt it. A country like America likes authoritarian regimes that like to listen to America. So Iranian things in the best interest of America would be the same theocracy but docile to America at least in the near future (or worse a full fledged military dictatorship which they anyway installed once).
However I just hope/dream (and it's too much of a hope) for the sake of Iranian people - it ends up getting a democracy after all (maybe).
However there is one thing clear - there is no rule based foreign relations, business, diplomacy anymore in this post truth world of ours. It's plain simple - you look after your own hind lest you find someone is at the door wanting to take it; might be an ally just as well.
A side note: I can't thank four of my country's ex PMs [0] enough that they ensured we had nukes inspite of stringent sanctions from other nations which ironically, among them, almost all already had nukes :D
The point is - we wish there were no nukes in our heating beautiful world; but tough luck, so you better get your own and get it soon.
[0] esp. Indira Ghandhi; also, probably the only head of sate that actually succeeded in "selling freedom" thing. Something America specialises in and uses as a premise to routinely reduce various parts of the world to rubble. A positive outcome of such endeavours - its defence industry getting push from it and of course it goes about trying to re-build it, giving push to other of its industries, half or quarter way and then finds other sundry places to subject to this routine.
Exactly my thoughts. We were absolutely blessed to have been developing our own nuclear capabilities at a time of intense international scrutiny. We were sanctioned to oblivion by the West for that until they realized (after Pakistan too developed their nukes, comfortably) that you can't simply ignore the elephant in the room. And we paid for it dearly too (with the assassinations of leaders in our nuclear programme).
At this point, it should be expected of any rational self-serving sovereign nation that they should develop nukes, especially if they have a record of historical non-aggression. South Korea, modern Japan, the EU (especially those in direct threat of Russia like Poland)... I don't expect Germany to grow a pair to not rely on the US, any time in the near future.
The truth is it doesn't benefit us at all, we simply do it because pro-Israel lobbies have a ton of power. Trump even diverted resources from Ukraine for this, and that war is really about US hegemony even though there's a moral aspect to it too.
I dunno. America seems to like Norway, and they don't seem particularly authoritarian.
- Did not sign the non-proliferation treaty
- Does not allow IAEA inspectors into their country
- Nuclear weapons program widely believed to have started from material stolen from the US
- Prime Minister wanted by the ICC for war crimes.
Since 2023, they have:
- Invaded and occupied parts of Syria and Lebanon
- Bombed Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen
- Killed nearly 70,000 people in Gaza
The Islamic Republic of Iran appears sane, rational, and peaceful by comparison. Quite an achievement!
I have no way of knowing if my friend is correct about this, but with the conflicting news broadcasts in the USA the situation is as confusing as hell. Off topic, but I have started finding news shows on the Internet from different countries like Singapore to try to figure out some semblance of truth about the world.
Your friend's statement, that religious minorities in Iran are safe as long as they don't protest, is basically like a situation of domestic abuse.
An abuser might claim their partner is free and happy, as long as they follow the rules and don't speak out. The home may appear peaceful to outsiders, but this "peace" is maintained through fear, control, and the constant threat of violence for any perceived transgression.
It is only somewhat safe for token minorities, tiny pockets of remaining Jews, native Christians: Armenians and Assyrians, but not Parsis (Persians who escaped Islamization) or Mandeans (an ancient gnostic sect)
Non-native Christians (i.e. Iranians who converted to Christianity) are severely persecuted. Same for various heterodox sects / offshoots of Islam like Baháʼís, Ismailis, Ahmadis, Yazidis, Shabakis, Yarasanis, etc.
Large non-token minorities (like Azeris, Kurds, Balochi, Arabs) are persecuted. Non Shias are unable to get a government jobs. According to some demographic estimations Persians per se are a minority in Iran, which would make it an apartheid state
Gays are forced to undergo gender reassignment surgeries
Women …
> A liberal *Israeli* friend told me several times that Iran ____
Thinking critically, what makes your so-called "liberal" Israeli friend an authority on Iran? Are they a recent Jewish immigrant from Iran? Do they speak Farsi? Are they an academic researching Iran? Do they serve in military intelligence or the Mossad (or not-Mossad)?
On the other hand, Jews had to leave the Muslim countries both in Northern Africa and the Middle East, with the total Jewish population there shrinking from hundreds of thousands to hundreds. Compared to that, Iran, from which only 70-90% of Jews left, looks not that bad. However, there were testimonies that members of Jewish families aren't allowed to leave the country all together, so I'm not sure if everyone is staying there at will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iran#Religious...
Pre-1979, per the 1976 census, Iran had a Jewish population of 62,258 (0.2%). Post-revolution it immediately fell to ~9k, where it has remained - at least until the last census in 2016 (0.0% representation).
While Christian representation didn't decline by the same amount, it took a sharp decline as well. Pre revolution (1976) saw a Christian representation of around 0.5%. 30 years later (2006 census) it was 0.2%.
What conclusions you should draw from that are open to interpretation... and when it comes to life in the Middle East and North Africa, you can also draw relative comparisons (is Iran worse or better for these groups?). But it's usually not a good sign when the population of an ethic or religious minority takes a sharp and sudden decline.
Under such regimes, the hope is that a sprinkle of people here and there come to know Christ. They immediately have eternal life with forgiveness of sins. Over time, as they share Christ and His Word, more lives will transform as a side effect of the sanctification process. As they do, and people witness it, hearts and minds might change over time in a way that changes the whole country (or its leadership).
Added emphasis
What they were doing, inching towards nukes, was a horrible move. In their position, you either sprint covertly and not play at all.
I suspect that after their nuclear program was discovered and set back they fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy and convinced themselves they could repurpose it as leverage. But they are a theocratic regime and their messaging (whether genuine or not) made that a non-viable option in reality.
This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent and you don't have mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations for you? Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first if you can't destroy their capability by other means. What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
I feel very conflicted about what's happening.
On one side it is clear that no country should give up their WMD projects. You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked.
> What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
That's speculation. Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
Religious government or not, Iran has plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts working for their foreign policy and war effort. Your underestimating this betrays prejudice.
Was enriched uranium destroyed? I doubt it.
Have they even "obliterated" Fordow site buried 90 m deep inside the mountain? I have serious doubts.
Iran's nuclear program was set back some months if anything.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_m...
also you say nk uses nukes as deterrent, deterrent from whom? if they deterred any, they were fine deterring it for 40+ years without.
In what sense Israel is not a theocracy.
Israel started bombing Iran and they returned fire. Is trump asking the largest economic and military power in the region to sit by idle as Israel sends missiles and bombs daily? He won't clarify even when asked directly. I don't think we have any reason to believe his narrative if he can't even explain it himself.
I would also like to add that Trump himself is the one who removed IAEA inspectors from routine inspections of Iran, so occams razor would suggest this ambiguity is by design.
> This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent
Well now we should all be terrified.
> Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first
You should reflect on the religious elements prominently at play within these belligerent states.
I deplore kakistocracy of any stripe, but it is obvious that dictatorships and dictatorship-curious regimes of any sort are an existential threat.
Why are you swallowing the propaganda you've been spoon-fed?
"Gabbard: Iran is not currently developing nuclear weapons"
https://jewishinsider.com/2025/03/gabbard-iran-is-not-curren...
You're misunderstanding their position and that's why it seems idiotic to you: they stopped working on building nukes back in 2003, after that date all they did was using the ability to get nukes as a negotiation leverage, that's how they got JPCoA in 2015 and since the US unilaterally left it in 2018 and the rest of the Western world failed to keep it working (that would have required courage to anger the US), Iran was seeking to force a new deal by raising the bar a bit: they announced back in 2022 that they'd enrich up to 60% in order to increase their negotiation leverage, but they didn't go past that stage nor did they work on the militarization tech in the meantime, because they weren't aiming to get the bomb at all.
Today strike on Iran nuclear sites endangers millions of American and Israeli lives. It teaches Tehran the same lesson North Korea learned long ago. That only a nuclear deterrent secures a regime survival. To believe Iran will absorb this blow without striking back is not merely naive, it is dangerously delusional.
It is also clear any Iranian nuclear critical assets were moved to alternative secret sites long before the strikes, as satellite photos show: "Satellite images show activity at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility before U.S. air strikes" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/22/satellite-images-show-activi...
Put those Israeli shoes on. There's a state armed with ballistic missiles in easy range of you, they have the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium, recently acquired more advanced centrifuges, they have the uranium already enriched far beyond what's necessary for civilian use, they have far more of it than they credibly need for such civilian use, and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you.
How well would you sleep at night?
So you're saying we're here because America has mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations and this is the best move?
Religion is just another ideology, and it s not like Islam has a specific position about nuclear energy
Iran’s options here are to bomb US bases, which are a lot closer by, mine the Strait of Hormuz, blow up oil infrastructure in nearby countries who are harboring US bases.
This might risk Iran a much larger war but the alternative of doing nothing and showing the world they won’t defend themselves is worse.
The US will again bankroll another big, more expensive war to the tune of trillions more in debt. Another decade of war ahead with no end in sight.
Meanwhile, new enemies will be made for the US as a young generation grows up living through this. The cycle repeats.
Its hard to think of a full scale war that was started by the U.S. that didn't have popular approval at the time it was launched.
It's also breeding a generation of young Americans that consider Israel their enemy: https://time.com/6958957/growing-antisemitism-young-american...
From what can be glanced from the news seeping through it seems that the population has been largely ready for it for a while now.
Remember that in the middle east, Iran is considered a dire enemy.
Quite different from the Iraq war.
At best everyone is repeating the same propaganda talking points, whether US or Iranian (though most of us are from Western countries, so it skews heavily on one side). The Internet is an echo chamber of ill-informed opinions.
I would argue that the best voices to listen to about such matters are the academic historians that focus on the region involved, and who've studied in great detail the evolution of the region over time, how crises were resolved in the past, and who therefore have an informed intuition for the current state of the region. Furthermore, because they are academics they are practiced in objectivity -- the ability to look at horrifying situations with fascination rather than disgust.
But such experts tend to be ignored for two reasons: they generally aren't charismatic enough to get attention, and "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it; those who do know history are doomed to watch others repeat it". This might seem rather gloomy. It is precisely the same level of gloom with which we would watch any slow-moving natural phenomena threaten life on Earth, for example. Like seeing a nearby supernova explode, knowing that one of it's nuetrino jets will eventually rotate and hit us within 100 years. The mass and momentum of geopolitics is enormous and almost impossible to change, with or without understanding.
So, we chat with each other, armchair quarterbacking this game in which no-one really has control.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-n-nuclear-watchdog-says-0510491...
That's the whole article.
If we blow up a place filled with enriched uranium, shouldn't there be an obvious spike in off-site radiation levels, as the uranium settles to the ground?
Meaning, isn't this damning evidence that there was no enriched uranium?
From Reuters [2]: > Hassan Abedini, deputy political head of Iran's state broadcaster, said Iran had evacuated the three sites some time ago. > "The enriched uranium reserves had been transferred from the nuclear centres and there are no materials left there that, if targeted, would cause radiation and be harmful to our compatriots," he told the channel.
1. https://www.newsweek.com/iran-nuclear-strikes-us-donald-trum... 2. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-launch...
1. Will Iran escalate, stay-the-course, or yield more in negotiations? Or take some other action I haven't thought of.
2. If Iran escalates, how far will it go?
3. If Iran does a token retaliation without major escalation, but refuses to give up its remaining nuclear program, what happens? Will the Israeli's be satisfied with a 2-4 year delay in Iran's program or will they continue low-grade attacks for the foreseeable future?
4. If Iran yields in negotiations, how far will they go? Will the agree to cease enrichment? If so, will they try to cheat? Or will the US accept some amount of enrichment and end up with a variant of JCPOA?
5. Do you think something else will happen not covered above?
6. What will the situation be in 10 years? 25 years?
The thing people seem to not recognize is: There's basically three countries on the planet capable of actually waging war in the 21st century (US, and Russia/China barely). Every other country is just a proxy for one of these three; their domestic capabilities look more like "throwing a tantrum" than actual war. Israel can't wage war without the US. Iran can't wage war without China/Russia. Currently, the superpower contribution to this fight is just dropping some bombs and diverting a few crates of AK-47s.
There's zero capability for long-term war here. But, there's also too much face-saving for negotiations or concessions to happen. So, the fire mostly quenches into embers; like the middle east has always been.
If there’s anything to that statement, things are likely to remain messy.
We already pulled the “they have WMDs” card, despite significant credibility problems.
We have a completely inexperienced 22 year old in charge of terrorism prevention at a time when any act of terrorism against the US would be a nightmarish scenario for escalation.
To me it looks as though we sent the invitation and left a note that the front door is unlocked.
Timeline of previous events
2006 – Hezbollah–Israel War: Iran arms Hezbollah during the 34-day conflict with Israel.
2010 – Stuxnet cyberattack: U.S. and Israel deploy malware against Iran’s Natanz uranium centrifuges.
2020 – Assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani by Trump who orders drone strike that kills the IRGC Quds commander
2021 – Houthi–Saudi Escalation: Iran-backed Houthis use drones and missiles against Saudi Arabia.
2022 – Iran supplies thousands of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones to support Russia’s war in Ukraine and transfer technology to Russia
2023 – Iran-backed Hamas conducts large-scale attack against Israel who responds with major military operations in Gaza.
2025 – Israel and the US bomb Iran’s nuclear sites> Dan is a congressman, and what journalist Helen really wants from him is information. She’s particularly interested in a “dirty bomb”—particularly, whether the rumors of one exploding in New Orleans are real, or merely fabricated to advance a war between America and Iran. Dan doesn’t answer, instead choosing to leave. It’s all vague, but it gives the viewer a chance to piece some details together: It was likely the bomb and the escalation of a war between America and Iran that led to the creation of the silos.
The Iranian regimes favorite enemy just played their part to perfection, so we should expect that to compel the majority of Iranians to rally behind their government in the face of a brutal foreign invasion by not one but BOTH of their standard-bearer arch-nemeses.
So what can we expect:
* a ground invasion is pretty much out of the question considering the geography or Iran and its neighboring countries.
* Iran destroys every oil production and transport sites in the region (say good by to your election, Republican Party)
* they could fast produce the bomb and test it underground as a final warning
* OR they fail and resort to more desperate measure like a dirty bomb
* OR they fail and there is some sort of regime change
* Or there is some kind of extended war of attrition and it makes the refugee crisis from the past 20 years seem like it was a mere tourist wave.
In any case, this will accentuate the Qaddafi effect and more nations will follow the North Korea option of nuclear "unauthorized" nuclear dissuasion, which is also the case for Israel by the way. Talking of which, Israel will become politically radioactive in the world. Its support is already negative in nearly all countries and has dropped significantly in the US such as the evangelicals.
The first infliction point would be to see whether the regime intends to strike at US forces or do they intend to climb down. IMHO, that would be suicidal, but it doesn't mean they won't do it.
The second point is when they decide to end the war (they aren't doing well), and all the accusations start flying. Then there'll be political fallout.
- Trump declares mission accomplished. Looks tough to his base, appeases Israel and calls it a day
- Ditto for Israel. Declares Iran's nuclear ambitions over and re-affirms the friendship between the US and Israel
- Iran lobs a few more missiles at Israel in retaliation to provide legitimacy at home and moves on
Everyone declares victory and gets an off ramp.
I expect (ok, I WORRY) a major US city to have a nuke set off in it by Iran within the next 5 years.
It didn't have to be this way, we had a working treaty and inspections regime until Trump pulled us out of it.
Decades of effort to prohibit nuclear proliferation have just gone down the toilet.
EDIT: Ya'll are right, the idea of them doing a test and going public makes a lot more sense.
Bloodlust is one thing, but the dehumanization is just far worse. Maybe they go hand in hand - you can't want to see someone die unless you think of them as inhuman.
There's something about social media where it has been amplifying this dehumanization as well. So another layer of sadness where it feels like we could have, should have prevented this. Like an asteroid strike or a global pandemic, it feels like one of those things that should never happen until it does. I remember looking at 80000hours and thinking, nah... nuclear warfare will never happen, let's focus on AI.
The same people would have drooled over the engineering of concentration camps. "Yeah it's sad there's some human casualties, but you have to appreciate the thought that went into it, and imagine doing that at that scale!"
They cower behind their the comfort of their home, AC, keyboards, western paycheck and standards of living while trying to be (seen) as "rational" and "stoic".
They talk like there is good sides and bad sides in war, right sides and wrong sides.
Most of them are these small powerless men who dream of power fantasy.
I wonder, will today's children who is seeing this spectacles of war in 4K, all gore and guts and destruction, will grow up to be better leaders for all?
Or are they going to grow up just like their parents, small powerless trigger-happy men filled with mid-life crisis.
If (if) this destroyed a nuclear weapons program, that is good for the world.
No one can predict the downstream consequences of today, but I fail to see an argument for why the world benefits from another nation getting the bomb.
The relevant question is: Why was it necessary to bomb Iran right now?
You can't look at what the leaders of these countries say. You look at what they do. Turkey's population, for example, is extremely sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. Erdogan will even get up there and bang the drums about Israel's evils. But that's just to placate the populace. In reality, he's done absolutely nothing when he could fatally wound Israel if he so chose.
There are allegations Erdogan's family (his son, specifically) is still doing business with Israel. Israel and Turkey have largely cooperated with the collapse of Syria. Both regimes simply cannot exist without material support, arms specifically, from the US.
What could turkey do? Cut off Israel's energy imports. IIRC ~40% of Israel's energy comes from Azerbijan from a pipeline that transits Turkey. Erdogan could absolutely shut it off if he wanted to. That would absolutely cripple Israel.
But he doesn't. Because he's not actually opposed to Israel.
Personally, I don't understand why Iran had to meddle in Palestine. When Palestine's own neighbors don't give a rat's ass for the suffering of the Palestinians, who are these mullahs sitting 1000 mi away to get involved?
After the first Gulf War itself, Iranian rulers should have seen the light and stayed tf out of the US's way (and Israel might just be the 51st state, practically speaking). Just work on improving your economy, educating your kids, building up your infrastructure and turn Iran into one of the world's top economies.
But noooo...... those idiots had to get involved in Palestine: supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.... WHY? Just why?!?
Countries run by dictators need an external enemy to paint as the cause for problems.
> Just work on improving your economy, educating your kids, building up your infrastructure
Who cares about all this secular nonsense. Killing Jews, that's what god wants you to do. Doesn't matter if you sacrifice a 100x your own muslim brothers in the process. They die as martyrs. That's an express ticket to paradise.
I think this makes a theocratic regime even more dangerous than a (more or less) secular autocrat like MBS. These guys ultimately want something that's not in this world. How can make a deal with that?
Isn't an act of congress required for this, in the US?
_We_ do special operations, interventions, liberations, preventive strikes, weapon destructions.
Today Congressmen's main job is soliciting bribes. I expect they want their name on as few pieces of paper connecting them to a conflict as possible. They are not in charge of the government.
In fact, it may never have actually existed.
Yes, but when only when you really need to go to a full wartime economy. Otherwise is just business as usual.
USA only has a limited amount of time left to dictate these things. We are playing with fire before the world order shifts. It is inevitable, and we would all be better off recognizing this and working towards a better future for all of humanity than trying to pretend like the USA is always going to be able to dictate who gets to do what.
If true they failed to destroy the material (just like last time when the US brought chaos over the world by creating a war out of "they have bombs" lies)
If not true, did they actually try to make the world a more poisonous place?
With a kinetic energy impacted like the MOP bunker buster, does the material vaporize ahead of the munitions? Is the destructive shockwave the munition casing itself, or perhaps the vaporized breccia being pushed in front of it?
In some ways I imagine it like a nail being driven into the ground but my gut feeling is that, at such high impact energies, something more complicated is going on. For example, with small calibre ballistics you can have many kinds of terminal action: from square edged paper cutting rounds used to make clean holes in targets, to subsonic rounds transferring energy into a target, all the way up to supersonic rounds which drive a shock cone through a “soft” target to cause trauma.
The elite nuclear club, forged in fire and sealed with hypocrisy, has made its position unmistakably clear: if you're not already in, you're never getting in. The path to national security does not run through treaties or IAEA inspections — it runs through enrichment, warheads, and the credible threat of annihilation. The lesson from history is as brutal as it is consistent: Those who gave up their deterrents — Saddam, Gaddafi, Ukraine — earned their place not at the table, but under the table.-
Non-proliferation, once wrapped in the language of peace and stability, now reads more like a cartel agreement. An exclusive arrangement to ensure the existing shareholders retain total dominance over the levers of this existential power. Meanwhile, aspiring states are lectured on restraint while having their infrastructure surgically removed via high explosives, or worse, sanctioned into collapse.-
It’s not deterrence anymore. It’s deterrence for some. The rest? They’re told to disarm and die quietly. Welcome to the age of managed apocalypse — where those with the bomb hold the moral high ground by sheer altitude, and everyone else is collateral in the performance of global order.-
Iran knew USA would come along one day, and they knew the max capability of the bombs they would drop.
So why did they not go a lot deeper/reinforce to a level where the b52 payloads cannot reach.
Only street laws and rules apply to them. They see negotiations as weakness, nothing more. History proved many times - you don't negotiate with tyrans and bloody dictators. Period.
If you have enough brain to crack leetcode puzzles, why can't you nail that?
https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2025/05/25/3320800/freigh...
Europe is going to have to pick up the tab for the inevitable refugee and migrant crisis that will result from a wider war in the region - which they won’t be able to afford thanks to Trumps 5% military spending demand.
Imagine what it means for Europe if a fraction of 90 million people (5 times larger than Syria) suddenly find themselves in a situation that would necessitate fleeing for survival.
And now, assuming this sets their program back 10-20 years, what will the answer to that question be?
Has anyone seen any analysis on this? It feels like maybe the nuke might be less of a deterrent than threatening to acquire one because using it would put you in a MAD situation where your ballistic missle might malfunction???
If another country bombed the US, and then their system of government was like, "oh well it isn't technically war cause it was just our single head honcho making his own decision. But good news, our second government entity officially declared not going to war with you, kthxbye srry lol", that logic isn't going to fly in the US. The US is gonna retaliate and consider it an act of war, because it was bombed by a foreign power... damage being already done.
How the heck can Trump do this. I get it if the US got attacked, then it's useless to wait for congress to decide war-or-not-war... but this literally puts the US on a direct war path with Iran. the US literally just bombed another country unprovoked.
And Trump said he hated war, which was his platform when running. He was gonna end the war in Ukraine because nobody wins and war is nasty. What is going on.. why is Congress so spineless too. They probably won't even do anything. This is the worst timeline ever.
Both Trump and Tulsi Gabbard (pre election) was running a "no war" platform with heavy connotation of "deep state" and wars only serving special interests (including Israel). My impression was that this outsider aspect really bought many libertarian and non-hawk republicans vote.
Hell, Gabbard was even branded Russian parrot after trying to talk to Assad, running as an independent after that. She even disagreed about this strike not even 3 months ago, 1 month ago and few days ago, with Trump.
But now they support it. They all just lied during election is the most probable reason but at least Gabbard have been saying same thing since 2016 election, 8 years, and all it took was Israel striking to go "aight let's go".
Is there just some information available to high official positions that makes you turn 180 on your opinion as soon as you get access to it, or what.
- massive instability in the ME. Just a few men with shoulder fired missiles can disrupt oil shipments from the biggest oil producers
- the high chance of being sucked into a forever war. Iran can cause a lot of problems with limited resources and can rebuild. They have no reason to give up and the US might have to continue bombing indefinitely, or launch a ground invasion.
- the increased chance of nuclear war in the ME. This action assumes that Iran has no backup facilities, or will never have, to continue building a bomb. Having already suffered the consequences, Iran has no reason not to seek a bomb.
It sounds trite to say from a position of relative comfort and distance, but I can only hope that someday our better selves will find peace with each other, around the globe.
But we won't be able to undo all the injustices and atrocities that we inflicted upon each other. We know these wrongs as we are doing them, and they will remain upon us.
Here are the facts:
1. Iran may or may not have been building a nuclear weapon. US intelligence says they were at least 3 years away.
2. Iran did not attack Israel. Israel attacked Iran.
3. Iran did not attack the US. The US bombed Iran only because Israel asked the US to do so.
I think it is important for the people of the world to get an idea how things are unfolding.
It should be an animation of the exchanges both verbally and physically. Have a complete set of news sources for each action.
The BBC is not something you can trust to report on anything. I can't even see a date with the article? Pictures of the situation room??? Trump's name written in gold??What a waste of my time.
Games from the 90's provide better visualizations than anything online today.
This will be one of the single-most proliferation-inducing events in history, maybe save Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He has betrayed his core by letting Israel suck our country into another Middle Eastern conflict, after promising to do the opposite.
plus they can actually make bombs even with 60% heu, they just have to be fatter and use more energetic explosives.
the time to have bombed Iran's nuclear program would have been months ago. or to have, you know, kept the original nuclear deal.
I'm personally of the opinion that the Israeli operation forced Trump's hand and he realized that he can't trust the Iranians going forward since they have no reason to trust us going forward. That's just my opinion; I obviously can't expect anybody else negotiating nuclear non-proliferation (or anything else related to war or peace) with America in the future to have such an optimistic outlook on this turn of events.
If the Israelis did force his hand then I personally can accept that he made the tough call that needed to be made in that moment, but then the next call needs to be distancing us from the Israelis because we can't have an ally that fucks everything up when we're negotiating, *especially* when they literally assassinated the guy who was negotiating with Trump on Iran's behalf.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
If the current regime stays in power, it's pretty much a guarantee that they will pursue nuclear weapons by all means available, in the future.
If the US / Israel want to topple the regime... that worked really well in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afganistan....
Also, isn't it really illegal for a US president to authorize a strike like this without Congress ?
The US actually ends Iran's nuclear program, they quit trying and obey ... because we bombed them?
Most of the recent middle east history doesn't seem to ever end as much as just go through a continuous cycle of violence creating more of what the folks condoning violence claim they're preventing.
> Israel is a hideous entity in the middle east which will undoubtedly be annihilated.
> Iran's stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon (Israel). We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region.
> Western countries allow no freedom of expression, which they claim to advocate, with regard to the myth of the massacre of Jews known as the holocaust, and nobody in the West enjoys the freedom of expression to deny it or raise doubts about it.
- Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran
Those who defend the Iranian regime or suggest that the Israeli government is the greater threat do so to their disgrace. SMH.
- Russia warned NATO for decades to not keep coming closer.
- Israel kept warning the world it would directly attack Iran if they kept getting closer to a Nuke.
- Trump warned Iran, and followed through on his warnings.
- The Iranian regime kept telling the world they wanted the genocide of Jews and attack Americans.
The demented Iranian leaders kept feeding hypnotic battle-cries to their military troops about taking down some of the most technologically advanced nations. They just got a reality check.
President Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s three most significant nuclear sites on Saturday helped rid the world of a grave nuclear threat and was a large step toward restoring U.S. deterrence. It also creates an opportunity for a more peaceful Middle East, if the nations of the region will seize it.
“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Mr. Trump said Saturday night. He made clear Iran brought this on itself. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying ‘death to America,’ ‘death to Israel.’ They’ve been killing our people,” he said, citing 1,000 Americans killed by Iran-supplied roadside bombs and other means. A nuclear Iran was a perilous threat to Israel, the nearby Arab states, and America.
Mr. Trump gave Iran every chance to resolve this peacefully. The regime flouted his 60-day deadline to make a deal. Then Israel attacked, destroying much of the nuclear program and achieving air supremacy, and still the President gave Iran another chance to come to terms. The regime wouldn’t even abandon domestic uranium enrichment. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted a bomb more than peace.
Military conflict is often unpredictable and the potential for Iranian retaliation can’t be dismissed, no matter how self-destructive it would be. Iran and its Iraqi proxies have threatened U.S. regional bases with missile fire, but Mr. Trump warned that “future attacks will be far greater” if Iran goes down that road. The U.S. has evacuated some personnel and brought military assets into the region. If the regime values self-preservation, it will give up its nuclear ambitions and stand down.
Much of the press has fixated on the idea that Mr. Trump has now joined or even started a conflict. But Iran has been waging regional and terrorist war for decades. It’s as likely that he has helped end it. Leaving Iran with a hardened nuclear enrichment facility after an Israeli military campaign would have been a recipe for maximum danger, all but asking Iran to sprint to a bomb.
At the same time, the Israeli campaign yielded a unrivaled strategic opportunity. Suddenly, Iran’s airspace was uncontested. Its substantial ballistic-missile program was degraded. Several of its proxies had been bludgeoned into silence. Its nuclear program had been reduced to a few key sites, one of which only U.S. weapons could be trusted to penetrate.
The opportunity to act and the danger of standing pat may have proved decisive. We would say that they left Mr. Trump little choice, except U.S. Presidents always have a choice, and have been known to kick the can down the road. To his credit, Mr. Trump didn’t, hitting the Fordow enrichment site as well as Natanz and Isfahan. This shows the President wanted to leave no doubt about Iran’s nuclear program and take it all down.
Good for him for meeting the moment, despite the doubts from part of his political base. The isolationists were wrong at every step leading up to Saturday, and now they are again predicting another Iraq, if not a road to World War III. Mr. Trump had to act to stop the threat in front of him to protect America, which is his first obligation as President.
“History will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night. Mr. Trump thanked him and said “we worked as a team.” The Israelis, who proved their strategic value as an ally, would like to complete the mission by destroying what remains of Iran’s missile infrastructure. They deserve a green light, especially as those missiles are threatening U.S. bases.
The chatter about TACO—“Trump always chickens out”—will now quiet down, but the more significant reassessment has to do with U.S. foreign policy. The Obamaites of the left, and lately of the right, counseled that the world had to bow to Iranian intimidation. The best we could hope for was a flimsy deal that bribed Iran with billions and left open its path to a bomb. They were wrong.
Whether this is good or bad is something people can discuss. But I think it’s fleetingly difficult for me to see any sort of righteous high ground these days.
If the comparison with how we treat hostile forces with nuclear weapons wasn’t more stark. N. Korea is basically left alone, their leader praised. Libya gives up nukes and then the state falls in on itself.
This is proving to any state that nuclear arms are really the only protection. The world is less safe, and the next generation of young men like me (20 years ago) are about to be thrown into the meat grinder, sent by a ruling class that doesn’t even answer to the people anymore.
We’ve really lost our way.
Gulf War -> US invasion of Iraq = 12 years
US invasion of Iraq -> USA, Iran & Israel = 22 years
Looks like it's time for USA to feed a new generation of grunts into the PTSD grinder again.
The data is that Iran has some weapons research, and have/had about 400kg of 60% enriched Uranium (no civilian use), an higher amount of lower grade enriched Uranium, and a certain number of centrifuges for enrichment.
The interpretation bit is regarding what's called 'weaponization' (aka taking all the materials and converting them to a bomg):
A modern bomb would use >90% (preferably >95%) Uranium and an implosion mechanism and be light and small enough to put on a common ballistic missile. While getting to 90% would have been easy for them (at one time they 'accidentally' enriched to 88%), they haven't done it yet, and it isn't entirely clear how close they are on miniaturization.
A hacky bomb could use a lower grade of Uranium (60% would barely do if they pooled all of it), be much heavier (it comes with the lower grade), possibly use a simpler gun-type mechanism, and would have to be delivered with some custom mechanism.
So 'weapons grade' could mean '90% and above', or it could mean 'enriched to a level that has no use apart from building weapons'. 'Distance to a bomb' could mean 'distance from what can be easily delivered' or 'distance from any fissile explosive'.
Reality doesn’t work like that. Netanyahu may indeed be a war criminal. That doesn’t make Iran the good guy and it doesn’t mean their stonewalling was not likely shielding the development of an offensive nuclear capability.
America’s sole responsibility is in its protection and the deterrence of these programs, regardless of who you have to hitch your wagon to. I really wish peace with Iran were possible. I see no evidence they’re interested in that peace.
https://govfacts.org/explainer/declaration-of-war-vs-authori...
watch as the US is now dragged into 10-20 years of war in the middle east again.
(It will be the first time a GBU-57A/B has been used in war, which is interesting)
They needed troops on the ground. Israel was going to do this.
It's possible they have just collapsed the entrances.
Trumps comments - https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump You have a loop, @Osint613 reposted Trump as "Fordow is gone" which Trump reposted. Neither of them have any idea.
(Natanz, Isfahan were already hit and damaged by Israel, the US didn't bother to bunker bust them, it was Tomahawks from subs )
3D model of Fordow - https://x.com/TheIntelLab/status/1398716540485308417
You need a tactical nuke to destroy Fordow, but the USA considers tactical the same as strategic, so it would be very unlikely. Russia could, since they put tactical in a different category.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44341958
Here's the interesting wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit
How is it possible that a foreign leader, Netanyahu ( who has lied in the past to get us to attack iraq ), can get Trump to bomb Iran and nobody, especially in the media, bats an eye.
The media is focused on the bombing, but shouldn't the focus be on foreign control over much of the US government? After years of soul searching over the iraq fiasco and the lies can we still be in this position again?
I predict this is a ploy to try to get us into a war, so Trump can have his third term, rejecting calls to step down "because we're at war". It's a little early, but our kids are already used to being in 20-year-long pointless wars in the Middle East.
But every group has their extremists.
We need to not forget the extreme Christians...
Seems even Israel might be more hesitant to target it at that point.
It is a big shame that many muslim countries are under dysfunctional governments and struggling to make progress so they can’t even protect themselves.
Personally I don’t agree with any kind of war but it is not realistic to expect everything to be fine while fighting inside your country, with a backwards mindset, discussing religion etc. not working honestly and expecting to prosper.
It could be worse.
But this is still bad, may be illegal, and isn't over yet. We don't actually know what they hit, if those sites were empty, and what's happened to ~1/2 ton of highly-enriched uranium or the regime's ability to produce more.
