I’m not so sure. Netanyahu was not loved by all Israelis. He was gifted a prolonged career by October 7. His grasp on Israeli power is tenuous, to say the least. If he screwed the pooch here, he might be done. He cannot afford to lose the US support, and once he pleaded with Trump to intervene, and Trump intervened, he used up that goodwill. That said, like many of us, I am holding off judgment till we get more true facts.
Bibi’s hold on power is actually stronger after he survived the no confidence vote. Yes, he is detested by a lot of Israelis and people who have worked for him but the fact he is still is the PM says a lot. Bibi’s one obsession is Iran getting a nuclear weapon. He did not listen to the Obama Admin when they told him to stand down. He also knows Trump is a lame duck. I would watch for Isreali covert action against Iran to see how things went.
No idea, but I would suggest Iran had to at least anticipated this type of attack. It is not too difficult to remove uranium from one underground facility to another. You are not going to remove centrifuges so easily, but one could easily postulate that they did not have all of their capacity in one location. It is possilbe DIA knows that Iran moved this stuff before the strike and regardless of how much physical damage was done by the bombs, it was never going to be the knock out blow that some wanted it to be.
Agree on moving the ERU stores but I trust the Mossad knows where most or all of it went or can track it down. The actual facilities damage I do not think the Iranians even know at this point. And seeing that the Israelis stole the entire history of the Iranian Nuclear Program and have penetrated the program so deeply, they likely know where it is or went.
I promise you that they had guys standing by to start the BDA as soon as the strike was over. However, as @vaxcardinal said, it still takes time, especially when you do not have 24/7 overhead ISR coverage. I had to deal with that last summer when I had a three star asking me what I thought about some BDA and I had to tell him that I am not an Imagery Analyst and we did not have any other Intel reflections, which did not go over well. I think we just need to wait and see what everyone knows after a couple weeks.
I would like more info on this. Iran knew what type of ordinance and how they would be delivered - we all did. Could they have moved weapons grade uranium to a different location?
Maybe we should ask the Israelis who leaked the BDA report so that fully deserved harsh punishment can be implemented upon the treasonist(s). I am more disappointed in US personnel leaking what is likely top secret material than I am if the MOPs didn’t cause enough damage to shut down the Iranian UG facilities. If Iran managed to scurry away with some 60% refined nuke material, good for them, but I have a hard time believing that we and the Israelis wouldn’t know about such movement.
So you’d rather go on with the leaders of your govt telling the sweet lies you want to hear rather than find out the truth? Because classified info or not, that’s all the “treason” is in this case. Definitely… interesting… that this type of leak “upsets you more”. The attack is done. No soldiers or imminent future mission are at risk. The assessments after the fact are things the world should know, hell the world DEMANDS to know. Now obviously it isn’t up to some rank and file to leak it, but at the end of the day the same people who stood there and laid out the attack need to be honest about the result for better or for worse. For all we know a higher up DID leak it because the politicians wanted to keep lying? I said it the minute this happened there was no chance it would end their entire program, and that’s operating with no intel whatsoever, just common gd sense. I think I posited between delaying them 1 years vs 5 years to rebuild if we collapsed their main test site or something along those lines. If we didn’t even delay them the minimum 1 year that would be highly unfortunate. But it’s not a total loss that we know the Iranian regime is 100% vulnerable imo. They have very little in the way of air defense. The question is what happens with that info?
I've never been called a liberal by anyone on here that I can recall. So your little attempt at deflection didn't work.
I "glaze" trump? Feel free to point out anytime I've praised trump besides securing the border. Other than that I've never voted for that piece of crap. Good effort though...
I would rather our govt didn’t spout off BS multiple times a day and actually communicated truth at the appropriate time in the (any) process, and did it through proper channels. Baseless braggadocio and premature falsehoods are worse than less-than-optimal performance results, and can bite us on the derrière later. Unfortunately, the off-the-cuff middle school style communications we get now and the rampant tribalism freely exhibited make our great country a laughing stock. It is truly unfortunate that the best military on this globe can perform as well as they do/did and petty politics and one upmanship can mar how we and the world appreciate their work. The intel, planning, execution, and results all happened sans BS. Why oh why does BS have to be added after the fact by some members of our govt and the press. I don’t want propaganda. I don’t want BS. I don’t want premature speculation. I want to know what happened and what the result is, but at an appropriate time. The need for immediate gratification is one of our worst flaws.
Previously he said the sites were obliterated. Now he says the intelligence is inconclusive but "could've been severe." I don't think it takes much reading between the lines there.
Maybe if the administration was more inclined to tell the truth then there wouldn't be as many leaks. If the leaks end up being true, we have to question if the truth was being withheld for strategic reasons or if it was to protect Trump's ego/pride. I'm not sure I see the strategic angle considering that Iran will obviously know that the sites weren't destroyed, so I don't see the benefit in telling the world that they were. Doing so, while also negotiating a ceasefire, just gives Iran the potential to restart their efforts. Granted, I have tremendous faith in our intelligence community, along with Israel's, so I'm sure we'd still be working to stop them behind the scenes. Someone more in tune with the defense community may certainly say that I'm off base here though.
