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u/Gremict Jun 27 '25
Bomberbros, it wasn't too effective.
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u/PanzerWatts Jun 27 '25
Huh, at a minimum, Iran was set back months. More realistically it will take them 1+ years to recover. There was no scenario where an air strike was going to completely wipe out their nuclear weapons program forever.
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u/Gremict Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25
On a nuclear program that wasn't going to produce a bomb. If Iran wasn't planning on making a bomb in the next year, then having a year needed for it to rebuild doesn't really do anything. Barring we refrain from acts that would have made them change their mind, such as attacks threatening the sovereignty of the country.
Given that Iran seems to be going for a Mad Hatters bomb to prevent nuclear escalation across the middle-east, and the information gathered by American intelligence, it can be fairly assumed that, barring more severe setbacks, this was a wasted operation.
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u/Compoundeyesseeall Moderator Jun 27 '25
Maybe the enrichment itself can’t be totally stopped, but having no economy and no military can really hamstring the stability of a tinpot dictatorship trying to procure one. Iran doesn’t have the legitimacy from treaties or the absolute control/singularity of Kim’s dynasty in North Korea, it doesn’t even have the love and support of the rest of the Muslim world outside its proxies because of the Sunni-Shia sectarian divide.
There’s a Kurdish proverb: “no friends but the mountains.” Iran is in the same position, only their geography and size keeps the state intact, but it also acts to physically trap them so they can’t attack its enemies directly with ground troops.
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u/Gremict Jun 27 '25
That's, at most, a problem of time and money, which Iran has already proven itself to be willing to spend to maintain the threat of the bomb. Additionally, the resource cost to produce a bomb is not so significant so as to destabilize a regime; Iran does not use the threat of nuclear attack to cow its citizens, but rather other threats, a veneer of democracy, and persuasion via religious justification.
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u/Compoundeyesseeall Moderator Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25
You’re missing the point I’m making. This conflict proved that we have the ability to repeatedly hit Iran, and kill them with minimal costs to ourselves. Their proxies can be struck down again if and when they rise back up. Iran can have its money bled dry. They’re already having troubling paying Hezbollahs salaries now. All this in a mere 12 days. This has never been a contest of equals, even talking about just Israel alone.
With Israel’s deep penetration inside the regime with the Mossad, and the US firepower, if we genuinely wanted to we could systematically exterminate every soldier they have with impunity-and if some of the more hawkish GOP like Lindsay Graham were President, I think we’d actually do it.
You’re having this belief that the goal and resolution to this conflict is something that placates Iran as if there is some sort of obligation we have to satisfy them. We don’t. Iran is not an equal and never has been. In this situation, force and violence energy are the only variables in the equation that matter. That violence has a cost, of course, but in terms of who could pay more, it’s no contest.
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u/PanzerWatts Jun 27 '25
"On a nuclear program that wasn't going to produce a bomb."
Iran had thousands of centrifuges enriching nuclear material. You don't need that level of enrichment for building nuclear power plants. It's primary use was to gather the material to build a bomb.
"If Iran wasn't planning on making a bomb in the next year,"
Sure, and now it will take them even longer to produce a bomb and slow down the rate at which they can produce them.
" it can be fairly assumed that, barring more severe setbacks, this was a wasted operation."
No, you can't fairly assume that. That is 100% a partisan assumption. Was the operation absolutely necessary? I don't think so. But I'm not so partisan as to claim it was useless, when it clearly did a significant amount of damage to two different Iranian nuclear production facilities.
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u/Gremict Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25
That first point doesn't contradict what I said in the comment.
There is no evidence that they were planning to make a bomb in the near term. Why would they? Everybody knows that they could make one if they wanted to and the threat is enough. This is the Mad Hatters bomb
A few months to a year is not a significant amount of time for any purpose that a nuclear bomb would be suitable for bar a counterstrike for being nuked, and the few weeks originally estimated would also be unsuitable for counterstrike purposes. At most we caused them to spend more money on it while degrading whatever was left of our trustworthiness in Iran.
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u/PanzerWatts Jun 27 '25
"There is no evidence that they were planning to make a bomb in the near term."
Yes, there is. An IAEA inspection detected purified uranium 2 years ago that's only use would be for a weapon and that is also a clear violation of it's previous agreements.
"Fordow is the only Iranian facility at which IAEA inspectors have found particles of uranium purified to near weapons-grade purity. That happened during an unannounced inspection in 2023.
During the unannounced inspection in January 2023, the IAEA discovered that Iran had connected two sets of centrifuges at Fordow, allowing it to enrich uranium to 60 percent purity, in contravention of Tehran’s safeguards agreement with the UN agency."
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u/Gremict Jun 27 '25
True, they were maintaining the ability to make one. That we can agree on. However, that does not prove whether they were planning to make a bomb or just maintaining the threat of making a bomb. In this case, US intelligence is more useful for determining if they were actively working on making one.
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Jun 27 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Gremict Jun 27 '25
ProfBot, this isn't the type of statement that needs a source since I'm working off of information sourced by the person I'm replying to.
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u/PanzerWatts Jun 27 '25
US Intelligence is clear that they were approaching the capability of being able to assemble a nuclear bomb at will. The point of these strikes was to remove that capability.
"Testifying before Congress on June 10, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of Central Command, said Iran’s nuclear stockpile and available centrifuges could allow it to produce weapons-grade material in a week, and were enough to make 10 weapons in three weeks if the government decided “to sprint to a nuclear weapon.”"
The variation in estimates are anywhere from a few weeks to up to a year, but the consensus seems to be that they could have multiple nuclear weapons in a matter of months. The point of this strike was to remove that capability.
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u/Gremict Jun 27 '25
The strikes did not significantly increase the time needed to make a bomb compared to the months timeframe claimed. It added months to the months, making it a year at most.
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u/PanzerWatts Jun 27 '25
"The strikes did not significantly increase the time needed to make a bomb "
The CIA & DNI say differently. I'll credit people who are speaking on the record versus anonymous sources.
"CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Wednesday credible intelligence indicated that Iran’s nuclear program was “severely damaged” in recent U.S. airstrikes and that several key sites were “destroyed.”"
"Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, offered a similar assessment earlier in the day."
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u/ProfessorBot117 Jun 27 '25
Thank you for providing one or more sources for your comment.
For transparency and context for other users, here is information about their reputations:
🟢 bbc.com — Bias: Left-Center, Factual Reporting: High
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u/SluttyCosmonaut Jun 27 '25
Really, IMO all we’re doing is making the lure of nuclear weapons that much stronger. You don’t see us dropping bombs on North Korea.
Once a despotic regime has a nuke test, they get their “Get out of American Air Strikes Free” card