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Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites
- cluckindan 1y agoYou don’t need to be a genius to figure out that centrifuges installed 70–80 meters underground will be largely unaffected by bombs which are believed to have an effect down to a depth of 60 meters.
- everfrustrated 1y agoHow they going to get to them?
- tonyedgecombe 1y agoI presume they will just fire the people who did the assessment.
- estebank 1y agoAre the US and Israel going to continuously bomb any working crew in the area that goes to dig?
- gtsop 1y agoCL/CB - Continuous Liberation / Continuous Bombing it's the ci/cd of american foreign poliyics
- mcphage 1y agoWe’re in the BDP stage—Bomb Driven Politics. That’s when you drop the bombs first, and then you have a meeting.
- I_Lorem 1y agoMurdering PhD's in Nuclear Engineering would be cheaper, and is a continuous Israeli program already.
- 123yawaworht456 1y agoif you're American, watch out for army recruitment ads without the usual DEI flavoring
- Loughla 1y agoI graduated from a very small high school. There were fewer than 20 guys in my graduating class, fewer than 40 total graduates. I graduated in 2002. 2 guys did not join the military; because of 9/11, the rest felt some kind of patriotic duty to join up. Of the guys I graduated with, half died either in Iraq or Afghanistan between 2002 and 2006, or killed themselves shortly after returning home. The other half are broken. Either physically or mentally. We cannot do that again. That we're involved in this shit show is an absolute travesty.
- cjbgkagh 1y ago“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." - Georg Hegel
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- heraldgeezer 1y agoAlready happened hehe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-wp4oJ2LY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-wp4oJ2LY
- cjbgkagh 1y agoNukes or ground invasion, the point of the attack wasn’t to knock out the facilities, it was so that Trump can be dragged along ‘reluctantly’ so he can sell the conflict to his base. It is a persuasion technique called mirroring. Trump mirrors the position of the anti-war base, then slowly piece by piece he changes his position bringing his base with him. I guess how far it’ll go will depend on how effective the state is at suppressing anti-war sentiment. If history is a guide then the state can be surprisingly effective at this.
- ethbr1 1y agoPolling of independents at 60/40 against should scare the shit out of the GOP, if they intend to press this. I expect there is no desire on Trump's part for a long game, and he just took an isolated opportunity (Iranian air defenses smashed and air force suppressed) to wave the flag and look militaristic. Limiting the strike to nuclear facilities also provides deniability to Iranian civilians that, unlike Israel, the US isn't looking for a full scale war.
- giardini 1y agoNuke them and then say that the Iranians f'ed up while handling the material?
- buildbot 1y agoReally? I think calculating the achieved overpressure to whatever structure underground after 6x 30k pound bomb impacts is far into the “genius” category. I’d wager you’d need a team of pretty smart people to even begin to get a wrong model of that.
- potato3732842 1y agoThis is not a "genius" problem. This is mundane number crunching that every military has been doing for hundreds of years with ever increasing accuracy. You need a few bombs and some places of varying geology to set them off. You take those data points, cross reference with all your historical knowledge and should be able to say whether a bunker of given construction a given depth under a given geology can be breached. I hate how allergic to just testing and prototyping things modern engineering culture is. Yeah, the bomb is expensive, but you gotta test it too so if you do it all right you get two birds with one stone.
- CoastalCoder 1y agoI agree, but I don't think it's entirely unique to this era. The US Navy's torpedo station in Newport, RI produced torpedos that were really prone to failure during the first few years of WW2. IIRC, the problem persisted so long because an admiral in charge refused to provide enough torpedos for adequate testing. (Sorry if there are any errors here, I can't easily fact check at the moment.)
- ethbr1 1y agoThat's accurate. They sped the torpedoes up, but failed to redesign the trigger, with the end result of ideal (and taught) geometry shots having a low chance of detonating. (Among other problems) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo#Problems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo#Problems
- PaulHoule 1y agoThey tested those bombs plenty. It's clear that they punched three holes in that mountain, but it's a whole frickin' mountain. Never mind the fact that bomb damage assessment is one of the most difficult problems in photograph interpretation -- it's hard enough when the target is above ground, worse when it isn't.
- barbazoo 1y agoIf they haven't removed the sensitive stuff before anyway after someone suggested they will make a decision within two weeks whether to attack.
- votepaunchy 1y agoThis has been repeated so many times but the enriched uranium is far more vulnerable in transport.
- barbazoo 1y ago> The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/iran-strikes-nuclear-sites-report https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/iran-strikes-n...
- cwillu 1y agoMost modern goods are valuable and hard to replace because of their mechanical or chemical properties, and so blowing them up destroys the value. My understanding is that U-235 is not like that, blowing it up accomplishes very little when recovery consists of what they'd already be doing to clear the debris, plus some mechanical and chemical separation.
- bitsage 1y agoI find this argument hard to believe. Israel had complete air superiority for a week and was monitoring all the sites, routinely hitting the above ground nuclear facilities. I’m skeptical Iran could transfer anything significant from Fordow and not be immediately spotted by Israel.
- bamboozled 1y agoFeel the same, not to mention Israel would have spies in Iran, satellites all over it.
- m3kw9 1y agoSure but they claim they put more than one on to it, it we don’t know how many or how accurate they were requiring one on top of the other to get more depth
- ramshanker 1y agoMoreover, I read the wiki ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP ) that 60m penetration specification is for ~35MPA concrete. And good basalt rocks easily go 100MPA. So if Iranians choose just good Mountain, and there are plenty of them...... Mother earth is really strong some places.
- mgiampapa 1y agoThat's probably why they targeted the air duct system. It's already been cut and provides a blast channel.
- LastTrain 1y agoAh, the Death Star theory
- mrtksn 1y agoThey probably have blast doors on those and USA made it very clear on Flightradar24 that the bombers are coming, lock the doors. I would assume that this thing is entirely compartmentalized, so to destroy everything you will need a bomb in every room. According to wikipedia, US made around 20 of those bombs and Trump used 14 of those. So %70 of the stockpile is gone in one go. Especially on the main site they dropped 3 bobs per strike location, so at best they could have destroyed 2 compartments with 6 bombs. If those were able to penetrate of course. Honestly, it looks like it was a show like the one where Trump fights professional fighters on the ring. Just significantly more expensive. Maybe they should just generate those images in AI, would be much more cost effective propaganda.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoOverpressure... as the Russians taught to the Afghani's, a small explosion in an enclosed space does massive damage to both soft and hard materials. You don't have to blow something up to destroy it.
- ethbr1 1y agoCentrifuges and driving equipment, sure. But U-235 doesn't stop being U-235 because you pressurized or heated it up. Can't blow up atoms. Best case, instead of a pile of enriched uranium, you now have a highly concentrated mine. Sure, you'd have to separate it again, but getting U-235 away from dirt and rock is a lot easier than separating it from other uranium isotopes. Even if it was stored as volatile UF6, what, you've converted it to UO2F2 / U3O8?
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoThey can buy enriched uranium from at least 2 sources... The expertise and equipment to develop and maintain a nuclear arsenal at scale is vastly more important.
- swat535 1y agoThe New York Times reported on Saturday that they had lost track of 400kg of 60% enriched uranium, which could yield 9-10 nuclear bombs: https://nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/iran-uranium-stockpile-whereabouts.html https://nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/iran-uranium-stoc... According to Israeli media, it is not known whether the Fordow underground nuclear complex has been destroyed. Netanyahu has already declared victory, but Iran's nuclear capabilities will likely be completely restarted, most likely within a few years or some estimations says months. There is no doubt that during that time Iran will strengthen its aviation, intelligence and reconnaissance, which have now failed drastically. "Regime change" goal for Israel also failed. Many more Mossad agents and collaborators will fall in Iran over the next few months as IRGC begins its crack down and Israel will surely lose a huge portion of their main weapon. Further TRUMP declaring "no regime change" today, made this matter worse. Iran practically has a script for its problems now. Israel has learned what will happen when Iran gets thousands of their hypersonic missiles and fixes the problem with the lack of launchers which Iran will certainly continue to produce. Only a ceasefire has been achieved, but there will certainly be a second round (likely by Israel again once more intel is gathered), because a war like this never officially ended. More importantly, let's not forget who paid the price at the end? As always, innocent Israelis and Iranians who never knew each other or had a problem with died.
- credit_guy 1y agoA bomb is much cheaper than a factory. That was the message of this bombing run: try to restart you nuke game again, and we’ll bomb you again. And that time we won’t stop until we topple your regime.
- jasonm23 1y agoYeah, swinging military "might" around in the middle east is a GREAT IDEA... zero unintended consequences... ... just none. .. every time a win.... are you even sentient?
- credit_guy 1y agoAnd a nuclear armed Iran is better?
- belter 1y agoIn other words: We selectively embrace intelligence assessments when they justify our actions, yet dismiss them when they prove politically inconvenient...
- barbazoo 1y agoIf they weren't planning on making nukes before, they for sure are now. Good job everyone involved! Just couldn't wait for diplomacy to play out.
- KevinMS 1y agoyea enriching uranium to weapons grade in a secrete underground lair indicates no intention of developing a nuclear weapon.
- stronglikedan 1y ago> Just couldn't wait for diplomacy to play out. For something to play out, it has to start. For something to start, someone has to start it. When no one is willing to start it, then it will never play out.
- unsnap_biceps 1y agoI'm sure that killing Iran's negotiator a few days before the negotiations were to take place helped deescalate the situation.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tartoran 1y agoWait, they killed the Iranian negociator?
- Tadpole9181 1y ago[flagged]
- spit2wind 1y ago> Just two days before U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations were set to begin, Israel assassinated the high-ranking Iranian official leading the talks https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iranian-official-leading-nuclear-negotiation-with-trump-killed-by-israel-jeopardizing-breakthrough-deal/ar-AA1GGdyU https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iranian-official-leadin...
- xnx 1y agoIf it was an obvious success, Trump would be tweeting spy satellite photos (again): https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137474748/trump-tweeted-an-image-from-a-spy-satellite-declassified-document-shows https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137474748/trump-tweeted-an-i...
- selfselfgo 1y agoI don’t support the bombing of Iran, but where is the US media that reflects my opinions? I will literally throw money at any publication using the “T” word to describe Trump’s actions here.
- nemomarx 1y agoIf you were around for the last bush terms you'll know that anti war media is going to be restricted to small circulation news papers and blogs. Any large TV channel will follow the white house on this kind of thing, with varying flavors of reluctance about the necessity of it or exaggeration of the threat posed by WMDs, etc. Try small news sites on the scale of 404media or social media commentators you trust, I guess.
- idle_zealot 1y agoWe might not be in this mess if US media weren't utterly compromised. I don't know how we get back to a world where there are news outlets with principles, but the free market of ideas doesn't seem to be working out.
- stevenwoo 1y agoIt was not a free market of ideas but a free market of media outlets and those with the biggest wallets bought most all of the media outlets.
- idle_zealot 1y agoThat's certainly the primary driver of the state of media outlets today, but good ideas don't win on even ground either. The nuances of reality cannot compete with simple narratives for human attention and buy-in. Gatekeeping and general respect for intellectual integrity are necessary cultural components that have been eroded, and it will not be easy to reestablish them.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>I don’t support the bombing of Iran, but where is the US media that reflects my opinions? X/Twitter is that thing.
- dantillberg 1y ago> Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. Is it even possible to "destroy" enriched uranium? It would seem to me that the most one might achieve by blowing it up with bombs is to spread it out a little bit.
- mulmen 1y ago> Is it even possible to "destroy" enriched uranium? Yes, obviously you can cause it to go critical. But that wasn’t the question. A stockpile can be destroyed by simply redistributing the contents in a way they cannot be easily retrieved.
- dantillberg 1y ago> cannot be easily retrieved This is I guess where the analysis gets fuzzy, where honest assessments may vary widely. My gut instinct is that enriched uranium blown up underground (assuming it was even there) would take at most around a year to recover, by turning the site into an open-pit uranium mine. The product wouldn't need to be re-enriched from scratch, as simpler mechanical filtering could probably isolate much of the already-enriched uranium. But perhaps it would be much harder.
- mulmen 1y agoThere’s no state change in the enrichment process. It’s literally just mechanically filtering isotopes. The point is it is possible to destroy a stockpile without destroying the contents of the stockpile. If you have to turn the site into an open pit mine then I am comfortable calling that a destroyed stockpile. This kind of strike will only ever delay the process. There’s no decisively preventing anyone from enriching uranium because the laws of physics are universal.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoUS should’ve just contaminated area slightly enough so that cleanup is impossible. Same outcome and 100% guaranteed success.
- perihelions 1y ago> "“The ceasefire came without either Israel or the United States being able to destroy several key underground nuclear facilities, including near Natanz, Isfahan and Parchin,” Lewis said, Here's more about these (not-widely-discussed) additional underground sites from Professor Lewis, https://bsky.app/profile/armscontrolwonk.bsky.social/post/3lsageddlpk2l https://bsky.app/profile/armscontrolwonk.bsky.social/post/3l...
- thekid314 1y agoHere's a great podcast he was on today if you want more depth than one of those big bombs: https://overcast.fm/+AA4I1vyy4qY https://overcast.fm/+AA4I1vyy4qY
- LadyCailin 1y agoSide note, very pleased to see an overcast link. Fantastic podcast player.
- neuroelectron 1y agoThis is just a repeat of what they said the likely outcome of using bunker busters on these facilities would be, likely using advanced modeling and simulation. There's not any new intel and if there were some sort of future tech, ground penetrating vision, they certainly wouldn't use it for public statements.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gip 1y agoThe status of Iran’s nuclear sites (and more importantly, its stockpile of enriched uranium) is anyone’s guess at this point. It’s likely that no one truly knows, not even the Iranians. It will take significantly more time to get a clear answer. That said, it may not matter much. Restarting their nuclear program in secret would likely be far more difficult now and would almost certainly be detected. Ideally, a political agreement will soon render the issue moot.
- LastTrain 1y agoI don’t follow. You say “no one can truely know”, what’s changed to make it almost certainly detected now?
- Animats 1y ago> The status of Iran’s nuclear sites (and more importantly, its stockpile of enriched uranium) is anyone’s guess at this point. It’s likely that no one truly knows, not even the Iranians. The project is dispersed and hardened enough that a single attack probably wont' be a decisive blow. The surprising thing is that Iran doesn't have an atomic bomb yet. Enrichment is the hard part. Building an A-bomb from enriched uranium is not that difficult. The technology is 80 years old and most of it is well known. It's no worse than building, say, an auto engine from scratch, something racing shops do routinely. H-bombs are another matter. Those are hard.
- alkyon 1y agoThey suspended they nuclear program 20 years ago. Still they keep enriching uranium as a kind of insurance policy. This is what US intelligence has been saying for years (as opposed to Israel who has vested interest in denying this).
- dilyevsky 1y agoWhat makes h-bomb so hard? It seems like the Teller–Ulam design is shockingly well publicized and ussr, china and even north korea have figured it out in just a few years. I would presume with modern computer modeling techniques it's not so hard to retrace those same footsteps. They also got designs passed down from pakistan and former soviet "consulters" so that couldve easily included the h-bomb as well
- Tronno 1y ago> Karoline Leavitt: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.” All the juicy intel is right here in this press statement. The bombs struck bullseye and killed satire dead.
- kashunstva 1y ago> “…the brave fighter pilots…” Is Ms. Leavitt unaware that the B-2 is a heavy strategic _bomber_?
- nopelynopington 1y agoEverything out of her mouth is a lie anyway. You have to calculate the opposite of her statement and that's the truth So: "This correct assessment is accurate and was not classified as ‘top secret’ and leaked to CNN by an known, high level competent person in the intelligence community. The leaking of this assessment is not an attempt to demean President Trump, or discredit the nervous bomber copilots who conducted a failed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Nobody knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs imperfectly on their targets: so we're not sure.”
- HankB99 1y agoI'd like to emphasize "Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets" because I don;t and I suppose anyone not intimately familiar with this particular munition and the task to which it has been applied does either. She's just bloviating which makes her the perfect mouthpiece for Trump.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lenerdenator 1y agoIt probably damaged them to some extent. Sensitive machines don't like dust and vibration. Bombs are known to cause a lot of both. From a negotiation standpoint, you're in a weaker position if the enemy's killing machines can cross into your territory virtually unopposed and strike what should be three of the most secure locations in Iranian territory. Both the Israelis and US managed to seriously compromise Iranian territory recently, and while the Iranians could probably draw blood and destruction on American territory if they wanted to, they couldn't do it to the same extent.
- Tadpole9181 1y agoEveryone knows you don't kill America with bombs at this point. You use social media and fearmongering and crony capitalism to make the county rip itself apart and kill itself.
- lenerdenator 1y agoFor all of the issues the US has, it can still seriously dick up things with its military.
- avh02 1y agoThen you'll be glad to know that military is being used on it's own citizens.
- lenerdenator 1y agoOh, I know. Not happy about it, but I know.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- omegaworks 1y agoWorth it to keep in mind as well, that Iran was committed under the NPT to limit nuclear development to non-weapons based usage. They were inspected regularly by UN bodies like the IAEA and the conclusions of our own intelligence agencies did not support the assertion that they were developing a weapon. They were using it to support a legitimate nuclear energy and radiotheraputics industry. They are in the part of the planet that will be most impacted by climate warming, so nuclear is critical for them to support baseline power needs. The United States striking these sites throws the entire international system of non-proliferation into question. If there is no commitment any country can make to any system of governance that allows for peaceful development of nuclear energy, there is no controlling nuclear weapons development and proliferation. Nowhere in this CNN brief are we informed about whether the sites were or were not used for weapons development. If we take the lessons of mainstream media's coverage of the Iraq war, it is likely CNN is stating this because their owners have been told that it would be better for their bottom line to manufacture consent for a second round of strikes than to preserve the President's assertion that the strikes were successful.
- votepaunchy 1y agoThere are no civilian uses for these large quantities of 60% enriched uranium.
- deftnerd 1y agoCivilian uses? Perhaps not, but Iran has always wanted to have a respected navy. Compact nuclear reactors like the type used in submarines with nuclear reactors for their power production require 90%+ enriched uranium. That's one very plausible use of HEU that isn't just "they want to build a bomb".
- 7e 1y agoA submarine is a good place to hide a breeder reactor. Far from any detectors.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- TheAlchemist 1y ago"Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan of New York said on X on Tuesday that “Trump just cancelled a classified House briefing on the Iran strikes with zero explanation. The real reason? He claims he destroyed ‘all nuclear facilities and capability;’ his team knows they can’t back up his bluster and BS.”" This one is quite telling... If this assessment is true, then I would expect the situation to get really bad in less than a year. What would you do if you were Khamenei ? Trump already said he doesn't raelly care if he needs to do a 'regime change'. The only way to ensure that this doesn't happen, given the dramatic air superiority of Israel / US, is to get nukes and get them quickly... What are his other realistic options ?
- _zagj 1y ago> The only way to ensure that this doesn't happen, given the dramatic air superiority of Israel / US, is to get nukes and get them quickly... What are his other realistic options ? Disband his nuclear program altogether? The only reason Iran is being bombed at all, at least by the US, is because of their nuclear program. Even when the Houthis, their sponsored proxy, were attacking US shipping, the US never took direct military action Iran.
- 7e 1y agoNorth Korea has the bomb and hasn't been bombed at all. It's a great deterrent. Now look at Ukraine, which gave up its nukes in exchange for promises of security, and how those were totally violated by Russia.
- _zagj 1y ago> North Korea is a client state of China, and it also possess a massive array of conventional artillery in range of Seoul. And since the Korean War, which we now know conclusively that NK started, almost every overt act of aggression between the two Koreas has been perpetrated by the North against the South, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
- bitsage 1y agoAre people really going to pick and choose which unsubstantiated reports[1] to believe instead of just waiting for actual proof? The narrative has shifted with breakneck speed from “WW3” to “it was pointless anyways”. 1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-intel-assesses-that-irans-nuclear-program-set-back-several-years-but-not-destroyed-official/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-intel-a...
- mulmen 1y agoIt can easily be pointless and also cause WW3.
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoI've seen more propaganda/hivemind behavior pushing this 'assessment' narrative than I saw promoting the hostilities by the US/Israeli's.
- impossiblefork 1y agoCan they try again? Build some kind of ultra-buster and use a Falcon Heavy to deliver it? Obviously this has been presented as done, but it doesn't seem ideal to allow a situation where Iran gets nuclear weapons.
- 2Gkashmiri 1y agoUh....did trump not say "its all gone", Bibi said the same while Iranians said "a few months setback, nothing more"...... So.... whose lying now? Still the Iranians ?
- lysp 1y agoThey were aware the site was at risk of strike prior to it happening. 1 - they moved uranium off site (or may do that regularly as standard practice). 2 - centrifuges were likely moved off site just to prior to the strike. The whole facility looks to only take a small area, around the size of a basketball court, so have no doubt this will be able to set up in another small area. Possibly multiple decentralised areas after this attack.
- franktankbank 1y agoIf this could fit in a basketball court they'd do deep cover and do it in a basement somewhere. You are full of shit.
- kgwxd 1y agoAll of them.
- fusionadvocate 1y agoEnriching uranium to levels like 60% is hard. But from there on you don't need thousands of centrifuges anymore. This means that they can set up covert enriching plants and get weapons grade uranium without drawing attention.
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoEven assuming your big expensive heavy bunker busters can penetrate & trigger as designed: Throwing big darts X square miles of mountain & hoping you hit a valuable target seems absurd. This feels like trying to depth charge a submarine, you just have to pour out endless charges & hope hope hope you get lucky. When those charges weigh 15 tons a piece, that's extra hard.
- IAmGraydon 1y agoYou really think US intelligence doesn’t have a schematic of the underground complex?
- beAbU 1y agoTrump would have tweeted it by now.
- iJohnDoe 1y agoGreat, so we pissed them off. Now they’ll just be more determined and we’ll have another 9/11.
- barbazoo 1y agoTSA will be ready this time.
- __turbobrew__ 1y agoThat look on the TSA agents face when you take your shoes off and there is 200g of HEU under each sole.
- blotfaba 1y agoSounds like Israel and the United States have "no idea what the fuck they are doing," as one sage was heard saying..
- giardini 1y agoHow deep would a nuclear bunker-buster penetrate?
- luke-stanley 1y agoThe title is wrong: the word "intel" should not start with a capital, the original site doesn't do this.