What's Next? Not Much Unless . . .
Report: Last Night’s Attack on Iran Was Planned under the Biden Administration
(Headline USA) The Pentagon’s surprise attack on three of Iranian nuclear sites Saturday nights had apparently been in the works for about a year, with the U.S. and Israel having practiced the operation during the Biden administration.
“It was the first exercise that war-gamed an offensive strike against Iran’s nuclear program,” an anonymous source in Israel reportedly told ABC News.
“The exercise was planned and executed during the Biden administration, ‘But we did not think a year ago that this would happen now,’” the source reportedly said.
The mission, called “Operation Midnight Hammer,” involved decoys and deception, and was met with no Iranian resistance, Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference.
Caine said the goal of the operation — destroying nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan — had been achieved.
“Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” Caine said.
Vice President JD Vance said in a television interview that while he would not discuss “sensitive intelligence about what we’ve seen on the ground,” he felt “very confident that we’ve substantially delayed their development of a nuclear weapon.”
Pressed further, he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “I think that we have really pushed their program back by a very long time. I think that it’s going to be many many years before the Iranians are able to develop a nuclear weapon.”
Much of the world is absorbing the consequences of the strikes and the risk that they could lead to more fighting across the Middle East after the United States inserted itself into the war between Israel and Iran. Airstrikes starting on June 12 by Israel that targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities and generals prompted retaliation from Iran.
While U.S. officials urged for caution and stressed that only nuclear sites were targeted by Washington, Iran criticized the actions as a violation of its sovereignty and international law.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Sunday that Washington was “fully responsible” for whatever actions Tehran may take in response.“They crossed a very big red line by attacking nuclear facilities,” he said at a news conference in Turkey. “I don’t know how much room is left for diplomacy.”
Both Russia and China condemned the U.S. attack. Araghchi said he would travel to Moscow later Sunday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A Turkish Foreign Ministry statement warned about the risk of the conflict spreading beyond the Middle East to “a global level.”
This is from a wingnut source and it asserts that we don't have to worry about Iran for several years. The rhetorical strategy here is to put the Iran War in the past tense, proving yet again how powerful We are if We just have the hutzpah to bomb the bad guys before they do anything to us.
It also supports my perpetual gripe about reducing international affairs to personality analysis as Sleepy Joe had more to do with last night's explosions than President Blowhard.
Comments
Oct 7 was a pretty dumb thing to do
It was so obviously nasty that between what Hamas did and Israel having a fairly reactionary government, most all of Iran's terror assets got destroyed. Hamas, and the Hezbollah. Syria was more luck than anything. Iran found itself in a war with a country a thousand miles away who have a superior air force and technology as well as tons of covert assets in Iran itself.
Iran is a large country with a highly educated citizenry, and 10% of the people living outside the country because the religious fanatics run the place. I wish someday Iran can fullfil it's potential.
Oh my
Fulfil itself how? Like when the West exploited the oil and kept the people poor? When Israel trained their secret police? You ever wonder why there was a revolt in the first place?
The US does not like independent states. It does its best to destroy them.
So spare me your concerns for Iran.
The attack on Iran didn't mean anything.
.
It's merely a delusional reaction from the criminally insane Neocons, who operate freely in NATO, the Nazfied Western nations.
The attack on Iran didn't change anything in the world we live in. Israel is still a domed pariah nation. Iran can still acquire strategic or tactical nuclear weapons if they want them — just as they could have done for the past 40 years, without bothering to enrich uranium.
And where did people get the idea that producing a nuclear weapon was an insanely difficult thing to do? That it would be impossible for graduates of the top tier universities of the world to produce such a weapon — with adequate funding? How absurd is that fairy tale?
The gaslighting is getting dumber and dumber.
The leaders who will survive and thrive during these times, do not have a sick public fetish over weapons of mass suicide.
CHINA DAILY
WHOLESOME CIVILIZED GLOBAL NEWS.
It's like a colon-cleanse for the brain.
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This has been unfunny comedy since Shrub deposed Saddam
USA, Russia, China, UK, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea are tolerated possessors of The Bomb. Nine is the limit. We have to blow up the world if any other tin horn dick toter joins the club.
Loony toons world we live in.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Absolutely correct.
Anyone with ~15kg of 90%-enriched U235, about 30kg of beryllium as a neutron reflector, and ~3 feet of ~155mm howitzer barrel could build a "Little Boy" gun-style weapon.
It is claimed that Iran has ~400kg of 60%-enriched U235. Fine: that would require perhaps ~50kg of the U235, and a bigger/thicker reflector, maybe ~60kg (and maybe a dual layer tungsten/beryllium reflector), to keep all those precious neutrons where they needed to be until the bang gets underway. Otherwise the design is very similar, and could be done by any BS in physics, using materials that are in the public domain.
That's what we dropped on Hiroshima- the vastly more complicated "Fat Man", implosion-type Pu239 weapon we tested at Trinity, and dropped on Nagasaki, was not the first nuclear weapon used in combat. And the complexity of the implosion system is not necessary at all to make one hell of a mess.
We never even bothered to test the "Little Boy" design before using it: it was deemed too simple to fail. So, if they want a weapon, they already had what they needed. We shall see what those soldiers that were sent up into the hills are doing with their time...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.