Thorn posted... Honestly, it's just a really stupid move all around. All the reporting I read in the past week stated that a bunker buster wouldn't be able to reach Fordow and you'd need to do multiple runs, landing successive bombs in the same spot. Maybe we did that, but it's still kind of an unknown if it would work and the idea that Trump is claiming it was "completely and totally obliterated" is just... something I don't think we could even know at this point. Even supposing it was, the place was supposedly evacuated some time ago and Iran is believed to have enough enriched uranium in other locations that like... this would at best result in a short delay.
This isn't even counting that our own intelligence had reached the conclusion that Iran wasn't working on a nuke... until Trump decided by fiat that that was wrong and forced his appointees to parrot him despite having previously saying the opposite. The reporting on that was that Israel's strikes on Iran had likely changed Iran's position to developing nukes and I'd expect these strikes to just cement that.
All that said I'm... not really sure where things go from here. Iran doesn't really have any good options moving forward. They don't have the capability to strike the US directly, presumably the US has moved its personnel and equipment away from areas in the region where they could strike (but with the incompetence of this administration who knows,) Iran was already exhausting its missiles on Israel, they can't really launch any kind of ground offensive because they're separated by other countries who surely would rather not get involved here... I guess if they're feeling desperate or spiteful enough they could try to close the Strait of Hormuz as a "fuck you" to the world economy but that will anger other Gulf states that rely on it for shipping oil...
I dunno, I feel like the strikes between them and Israel will continue... and then it just... hopefully settles down? Only now Iran will be deadset on getting a nuclear weapon for deterrence and the bombings, especially after the US did, will likely result in a rally-around-the-flag effect inside Iran so regime change is probably less likely than it otherwise would have been.
Literally I think the best move for the US for both its aims and really the world was to just fucking do nothing but Trump just couldn't have that.
That's a very pessimistic view
I agree