“He Fall Down, Go ‘BOOM!’”

A 2-day old satellite image of the Fordow nuclear site shows the Iranians emptying out the facility. There are two competing scenarios of what is occurring here:

1) Bad Intent -- They are emptying out the facility to preserve nuclear material and critical equipment...

#OSINT #IsraelIranWar 1/2

...that was stored there to be used in rebuilding their capacity; or,

2) Good Intent -- They received a warning of the the strike and were allowed to remove the nuclear material (possibly transferring to Russian control) to prevent an environmental disaster.

I am guessing No. 1.

2/2

I go with “both, and a little bit of neither.”  “Bad intent” is definitely in the eye of the beholder, because Bibi and his buddy have been broadcasting this attack for weeks. Iran didn’t need a warning of the strike: Trump told them they had two weeks. Only gullible Beltway reporters thought that meant “no earlier than.”

“Transferring to Russian control” sounds like worse intent, to me.

So: still no evidence Iran was close to nuclear weapons fuel (creating the device itself, and making it deliverable, another matter entirely). 

Trump declares he’s going to bomb the facilities in a voice only Beltway pundits can’t hear. 

Trump obliges Bibi, his new BFF, and teaches every other would be nuclear power what North Korea and other similarly armed countries know: get your nuke, and they won’t fuck with you. Except Iran didn’t want to do that. Though maybe now, they do.

Further information:

DOD reports 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) dropped, so close to the entire stockpile used in this operation.

At a cost of $56 million. And we still don’t know how much damage they actually did. There’s also this cost:

Iran’s jamming GPS in the Strait of Hormuz, messing with ~970 ships, per Windward. UKMTO confirms the interference. Faulty AIS coordinates are screwing up navigation in the Persian Gulf. The IRGC threatens to shut the strait down in hours.

The American people will get to decide whether it was worth the cost. Good luck with that.