US Attacks Iran

Astyanax

So much for 2 weeks. Looks like he’s done mullah-ing it over about the mullahs in Iran.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/21/politics/trump-iran-air-strikes

POTUS will address the nation at 10 PM.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-address-nation-after-attacking-iran-nuclear-sites-2088874

Astyanax

Hope he isn’t giving the address on board this.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-doomsday-plane-spotted-flying-2087848

telcodad

Trump shares post claiming that ‘Fordo is gone’
By Jacob Magid, The Times of Israel - June 21, 2025
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-shares-post-claiming-that-fordo-is-gone/

US President Donald Trump has shared a post on Truth Social from an open-source intelligence account claiming that “Fordo is gone.”

Fordo is Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facility that has been characterized as the most integral part of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Astyanax

telcodad Wow there isn’t even any rubble! 🙂

telcodad

Astyanax Wow there isn’t even any rubble!

Well, they may need to rename Fordo Mountain to be “Fordo Crater” now. 😉

InternetJeff

Astyanax So much for 2 weeks.

It looks like there was a massive deception. Watching coverage now suggesting that the B-2s flying west were a feint, and the attack was carried out by bombers that deployed east days ago.

The regime never knew what hit them. Allied forces control the skies, and Iran’s missiles and launchers are being depleted. The only option left will be for Iran to sue for peace. I still maintain that they need to be treated like Japan at the end of World War II.

telcodad

Here’s some background on the GBU-57/B [or Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) ] bomb:

Why This Is the Only Bomb That Could Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Bunker—Under 300 Feet of Rock
American military engineers designed the GBU-57/B bomb to devastate deeply buried bunkers without radioactive fallout. It’s the only nonnuclear weapon that can reach Iran’s hardest target
By Deni Ellis Béchard, Scientific American - June 18, 2025
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-massive-ordnance-penetrator-bomb-israel-wants-to-destroy-irans-fordo/

digitalfutur

Since the (correct) objective is to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, there’s no room for half-measures, so the attack is logically justified. With that though, comes the necessary preparation for and defense of targets that Iran or their proxies may attack. On X, Trump has claimed that 6 GBU-57 MOPs were dropped on Fordo.

JRB-Ware

This is AWESOME!

GO USA!!!

Astyanax

John McCain may actually at least crack a smile down on DJT. 😉

px_eliezer_

JRB-Ware This is AWESOME!

GO USA!!!

Looks like a big success tonight to be sure, sincere congratulations to all involved.

But after the night of heavy drinking and getting falling-down drunk, comes the next morning of the hangover.

So let’s see what comes [next] for good or bad.

HooRU

It was the one real choice. However, the bragging is provakative and unproductive and not cool.

HooRU

From the White House and Bebe. They are being boastful and claiming only America can do this. That sort of talk will fire up our enemies and it’s counter productive. Speak softly and carry a big stick Bufford!

Bombtrad

px_eliezer_ So let’s see what comes [next] for good or bad.

I’d suggest that reprisals organised from Iraq would be the least of the worries , particularly for American citizens travelling outside the borders.

Any American traveller overseas is carrying a target on them, particularly if they make a show of being American.

Every sympathetic group, and they are all over the world, will now see your citizens as fair game. On boats, tour groups, aircraft, walking down the street of any foreign city.

HooRU That sort of talk will fire up our enemies and it’s counter productive.

My very point.

Dks01

Bombtrad HooRU That sort of talk will fire up our enemies and it’s counter productive.

My very point.

A more informed and insightful comment. Nothing is predictable. The world just got a whole lot more dangerous than it was 24 hours ago.

After hearing the news, I immediately called one of the country’s most knowledgeable experts on Iran, Karim Sadjadpour. He is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and worked as an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Tehran, from 2003 to 2005.

"I suspect the Iranians think differently. They have a program on which they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars. The regime—perhaps not the people, but the regime—takes pride in that and now it is destroyed. No dictatorship wants to look emasculated and humiliated in the eyes of its own people.”

The question now is how Iran will respond. “If the Ayatollah [Ali Khamenei] responds weakly, he loses face,” Sadjadpour said. “If he responds too strongly, he could lose his head.”

“A lot of the options that they have for retaliation are the strategic equivalent of a suicide bombing,” he went on. “They can do enormous damage to our embassies. They might mine the Strait of Hormuz. They can continue missile barrages against Israel. They can attempt to do real damage to the world economy, though the regime might not survive the blowback.”

In the past couple of weeks, Israeli intelligence and bomber pilots have wiped out much of the upper echelons of the Iranian security establishment, along with the country’s top nuclear scientists. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in place, however, and, according to numerous analyses, they are likely to fill any power vacuum, at least in the short term. But the truth is, Sadjadpour said, the events of the coming days and months will be hard to predict.

Excerpted to remove political comments from https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/donald-trump-bombs-iran-and-america-waits Paywall.

Dks01

Potential impact in the short term.

Global oil prices are expected to rise when energy markets start trading on Monday morning in Asia.

“The US attacks have pushed the conflict to a new level and many fear it will only make a bad situation worse,” Dr Carole Nakhle, chief executive of Crystol Energy tells the BBC.

“That fear will be reflected in a higher geopolitical premium added to oil prices - no one knows how much that accounts for, but as a rule of thumb the bigger the fear, the bigger the premium,” she adds.

Brent crude ended the trading week on Friday at $77.01 a barrel after gaining almost 20% in the last month.

Despite those gains, oil prices are still currently lower than where they were at the same point last year.

The cost of crude oil affects everything from how much it costs to fill up your car to the price of food at the supermarket.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/ckg3rzj8emjt

Astyanax

Bombtrad Any American traveller overseas is carrying a target on them, particularly if they make a show of being American.

SSDD. Welcome to an American’s world of international travel. 🙄

That’s why I always wear drab style-less clothes when I fly and I make a point not to buy “American Tourister” luggage despite its high quality because it has their logo and name blazoned across their products so I have a semblance of a hope in hail of getting my bag at an international bag claim.

I still know my “yankiness” sticks out like a sore thumb. I am who I am and will only do so much. I just can’t keep up my acting skills showing that “first time I’ve ever flown on an airplane” look.

I’ve walked the streets of some dicey cities too like Cairo, Kathmandu, Havana, etc and know to keep my hand in my pocket holding my wallet and passport.

Astyanax

HooRU the bragging is provakative and unproductive and not cool

We (hopefully) just ratcheted down one of, if not the most, and biggest sponsor of terror in the world. They are one of the original members of the Axis of Evil (remember that from the old W days?) and we just attacked one of them directly for the first time. We finally let the world know after years of ambivalence, indecision, and if not outright fecklessness, we will hit back and will indeed use force to accomplish our aims. Peace through strength works. It may indeed get less peaceful in the coming days and weeks with expected retaliatory strikes from Iran but if Israel hits them back hard enough they may not be able to no matter how much they may want to.

Iran had no peaceful intentions with those uranium enrichment facilities especially if they felt the need to bury them hundreds of feet into a mountain to protect them.

The last American plane that entered Iranian airspace was delivering pallets of cash to the regime. The next one was bringing in pallets of bombs to them.

Donoreo

“Operation Midnight Hammer” sounds like what happens after a night out with Thor and Jane Foster 😉

px_eliezer_

julia1999 China just had a gut check regarding its desires for Taiwan.

Maybe.

But China is a far more formidable opponent than Iran.

We were worried that Iran would GET nukes, but China HAS lots of nukes, and a huge army, navy, and air force.

As well:

Last night’s lesson is that in the world today, powerful countries can do whatever they want, regardless of the opinions of other countries (even allies such as NATO).

That’s the SAME idea that Putin has, by the way.

And CHINA may easily feel the same.

(Again, a fight with China is a whole different matter than a fight with Iran).