Israel launches attack on Iran | US bombs Iran nuke sites

Let’s put Trump aside for a minute. How much of a black eye is this for the military? Our biggest and bestest non-nuclear weapon did not destroy the facility as intended, but rather just busted up the foyer.
 
Purple Nurple said:
Let’s put Trump aside for a minute. How much of a black eye is this for the military? Our biggest and bestest non-nuclear weapon did not destroy the facility as intended, but rather just busted up the foyer.
Click to expand...
It seems that terrorists are really good at building underground cement structures.

I also don't think we know the extent of the damage. Lots of speculation....
 


“… There is no question that Israel achieved notable tactical successes, inflicting serious damage on Iran’s military command and scientific infrastructure.

But strategic objectives carry greater weight. Based on available evidence, Netanyahu’s core goals—undermining Iran’s deterrence and meaningfully rolling back the elements of its nuclear program that pose the greatest proliferation risk—remain unmet.

One of the most significant failures lies in the nuclear file. There is no confirmation that Iran’s nuclear breakout capacity has been meaningfully degraded.

While Trump administration officials have insisted that the strikes set Iran’s program back by years, early U.S. and European intelligence assessments suggest otherwise. Satellite imagery taken prior to the strikes showed trucks potentially removing sensitive equipment from key sites, and Iran had already announced the construction of a new, secret, and hardened enrichment facility that may be untouched. More critically, Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium and its advanced centrifuges—the core ingredients for developing a nuclear weapon—appear to remain intact.

As many analysts warned before the war, verifying serious damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is impossible without on-the-ground inspections or a full-scale invasion. In the absence of either, Iran’s nuclear program is entering a far more opaque and unpredictable phase….”
 
superrific said:
I don't think it's a black eye at all. It just means air power has its limits.
Click to expand...
Perhaps not the military. They did do their job flawlessly, but we did not accomplish our objective. We in fact can’t just bomb Iran’s program into nonexistence. Our capabilities are seeeningly greatly exaggerated. I can’t see how that’s not a black eye for our military/intelligence apparatus.
 
Purple Nurple said:
Perhaps not the military. They did do their job flawlessly, but we did not accomplish our objective. We in fact can’t just bomb Iran’s program into nonexistence. Our capabilities are seeeningly greatly exaggerated. I can’t see how that’s not a black eye for our military/intelligence apparatus.
Click to expand...
It's not the intelligence/military community who decided to bomb Iran. That was Bibi, and he snookered Trump into it.

There's a reason why Obama committed to diplomacy and people need to realize that the nuclear weapons program in Iran is a problem of Trump's own making. You're a conservative guy, not hopelessly stupid. You can clearly see what is going on, right? In every aspect of our national life, the country is failing and moving backwards, largely because the entire GOP has not merely committed itself to doing what Trump wants, but committed to Trump defining their reality.
 
superrific said:
It's not the intelligence/military community who decided to bomb Iran. That was Bibi, and he snookered Trump into it.

There's a reason why Obama committed to diplomacy and people need to realize that the nuclear weapons program in Iran is a problem of Trump's own making. You're a conservative guy, not hopelessly stupid. You can clearly see what is going on, right? In every aspect of our national life, the country is failing and moving backwards, largely because the entire GOP has not merely committed itself to doing what Trump wants, but committed to Trump defining their reality.
Click to expand...
Oh wow Thank you for not deeming me hopelessly stupid.

Yes. Trump decided to bomb them. Don’t you think that somewhere in that calculus he was assured of the result of such an attack. I’ve read/seen for years about the MOAB and their capabilities. That didn’t pan out.

Turns out Russia doesn’t have a mighty military that will just roll over its neighbors. The USA can’t just drop bombs and obliterate the objective.

Seems like a black eye for both with regard to their military prowess.
 
Purple Nurple said:
Perhaps not the military. They did do their job flawlessly, but we did not accomplish our objective. We in fact can’t just bomb Iran’s program into nonexistence. Our capabilities are seeeningly greatly exaggerated. I can’t see how that’s not a black eye for our military/intelligence apparatus.
Click to expand...
I think if the military told Congress and the president that it could collapse those bunkers, it's got to be a black eye for them because it doesn't look like it happened. You can say that the military successfully went into Iraq and put the bombs where they were supposed to go, and that's probably true. The pilots and the people that supported them seem like they did a very good job, but the people that were assessing the feasibility of achieving the objectives seem to have failed.
 
Last edited:
Purple Nurple said:
Perhaps not the military. They did do their job flawlessly, but we did not accomplish our objective. We in fact can’t just bomb Iran’s program into nonexistence. Our capabilities are seeeningly greatly exaggerated. I can’t see how that’s not a black eye for our military/intelligence apparatus.
Click to expand...
My guess is that the military intelligence had serious reservations which Trump ignores.

The two things I worried about is that 1) if Iran wasn’t rushing their nuclear program they are now and 2) we just showed the world exactly what our limitations are.

All because Trump is an idiot.
 
Purple Nurple said:
Oh wow Thank you for not deeming me hopelessly stupid.

Yes. Trump decided to bomb them. Don’t you think that somewhere in that calculus he was assured of the result of such an attack. I’ve read/seen for years about the MOAB and their capabilities. That didn’t pan out.

Turns out Russia doesn’t have a mighty military that will just roll over its neighbors. The USA can’t just drop bombs and obliterate the objective.

Seems like a black eye for both with regard to their military prowess.
Click to expand...
1. Well, most of our conservative posters aspire to mere hopeless stupidity, so yeah it's a low bar. Didn't mean to offend.
2. I think that Trump does not get any information that is remotely accurate. He has made it super-clear that he's only willing to listen to what he wants to hear. So, no, I do not think that he was "assured" of the result in any rational meaning of that term.
3. Hegseth probably told him that it would work 100%. This is what happens, right? Hegseth's position was precarious because, as has been reported, he's been pissing a lot of people off with his incompetence, vanity and inexperience. So from Hegseth's view, the bombing was a way to save his job. The most important thing was getting it to happen. If it was a success, then he's a hero. If it isn't, if he overpromised, well he's out the door anyway.

This is, of course, a dynamic that any sports fan knows: the coach or GM on the hot seat makes risky moves to shoot for the moon, because failure doesn't matter given that they would lose their jobs anyway. Good managers know how to address these situations.

I doubt Trump even thinks about the motivations of his underlings at all, and certainly cannot take them into account when making assessments.

4. I really do not think this is a black eye on the military. It was Trump. And of course he didn't think about the strategic element at all. Before now, that big bomb was really scary and it was a stick in our arsenal. It's still scary, but it's a little less scary than it was. Which is why it should have been deployed only in an emergency situation, allowing the US to retain the strategic ambiguity as to our capabilities. Instead Trump blew it on Bibi's vanity project.

It's these small things that fully expose Trump for the idiot he is.
 

“… Mohammadi said the Iranian regime is using the post-conflict climate to increase pressure on civil society activists, political prisoners, and dissidents.

In response to Iranian officials’ claims of “victory” in the war, Mohammadi said: “I simply don’t believe it. War weakens the tools that help bring democracy and human rights, like civil society.”…”
 

China and Russia Keep Their Distance From Iran During Crisis​

Some U.S. officials talked about an “axis” of authoritarian nations, but the American and Israeli war with Iran has exposed the limits of that idea.


“… It appeared that the four countries were united by anger, authoritarianism and animus against the United States and its allies.

But Iran’s sales of drones and ballistic missiles to Russia for its war and oil shipped to China did not pay off when it mattered, raising doubts about unity among the nations.

None of the other three states rushed to aid Iran during its war with Israel or when U.S. forces bombed Iranian nuclear sites. China and Russia, by far the two most powerful countries among the four, issued pro forma denunciations of the American actions but did not lift a finger to materially help Iran.…”
 

A Defiant Iran Draws on the Lessons of an Earlier War​

The brutal fight against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq four decades ago shaped the recent war and guides Iran’s next steps​


🎁 —> https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-ea...e?st=ZasS8X&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

“…
While battered, Iran has remained defiant, most recently by ending cooperation with international nuclear inspectors, a move that closes the world’s window on of its program.

After the U.S. bombed Iran’s core nuclear facilities, the regime vowed to keep its nuclear program going. Abdolrahim Mousavi, the new chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, said Iran “won’t back down.” Israel had killed his predecessor days earlier.

The pronouncements reflect wartime bravado. Israel’s campaign, in which it quickly established dominance in Iran’s skies and simultaneously hit many nuclear scientists and military leaders, demonstrated its overwhelming military superiority and the extensive penetration of the regime by its spies.

Iran launched a major crackdown once the shooting stopped to reassert its domestic control….”
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top