So what is the consensus view here? From the pictures released thus far, this whole thing seems to be nothing but political theater to me. Trump waited for Iran to move all their centrifuges and uranium, then we bombed some entrance tunnels, ignored all surface structures, and didn't even attempt to penetrate the actual nuclear facility. Even that cringe "Topgun: Maverick" plot thing Fox was pushing was bullshit, the MOPs didn't fall into the same crater for more penetration. Even the Iranian missile retaliation is empty theatrics.
These were the safest places in Iran to locate the centrifuges. If they were removed from those locations, they will eventually be destroyed at some other location.
Destroying the actual Uranium was always going to be utterly impossible. Whatever Iran already has, they have and nothing really would change that. The best that could be done is to damage their most secure facilities as much as possible and to potentially have damaged their existing centrifuges.
How much damage has been to the facilities. Truth is, nobody who knows that is talking to the public. But there are alot of people out there who will claim that they know everything.
Its always been the case that there is no way at all to permanently stop the Iranian nuclear program. Bombing isn't going to destroy the Uranium they already have. Whenever the bombing stops, they can reconstruct whatever has been destroyed. There is nothing difficult about making a nuclear weapon if you have the things Iran has.
To keep the Iranians out of production by force is going to require a periodic bombing campaign that will go on forever. But that is probably the only option on the table right now. Iran now has enough material to make a handful of bombs. The question now isn't preventing Iran from having "a" bomb. Its a question of how many bombs they are going to be allowed to have.
The last time the US tried to deal with this problem, we got the Obama deal which bribed the Iranians with planeloads of cash, agreed to Iran having everything it wanted openly after about ten years and promised the Saudis that they could have their own nuclear program. The Obama deal was in every respect worse than the bombing campaign.
But realistically all of this is way too late. Iran is now a nuclear country and in the long run, American policy toward Iran is likely to weaken at some point in the future after Trump. Iran has also proved that it has capacity to drop some missiles on the major cities of Israel regardless of any defense system. And statistically if those missiles had nuclear weapons in them, the major cities of Israel could be hit with them.
So in the end, as usual, its meaningless. It doesn't matter. All that what has been will accomplish is changing the topic of conversation in the mainstream media from ICE to this.
