Posts Tagged ‘Dan “Razin” Caine’

Iran Strikes: Day 6

Thursday, March 5th, 2026

Day six of Operation Epic Fury/Rising Lion, and there’s a bunch of news from Iran, Lebanon, and even Azerbaijan. So lets dig in:

  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the current war had to happen because immediately after the last strike, Iran started digging even deeper bunkers for their nuclear program.

    In an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu said, “The reason that we had to act now is because after we hit their nuclear sites and their ballistic missile program [in June 2025]… they started building new sites… underground bunkers that would make their ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program immune within months.”

    “If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future,” he said.

    Moreover, envoy Steve Witkoff said the Iranians “bragged” about enriching Uranium.

    US special envoy Witkoff, who together with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner led Washington’s negotiations with Tehran over the disputed nuclear program, said that Iran’s top negotiators boasted in the first round of talks this year of having enough highly enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs.

    “In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly — with no shame — that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium] and that they’re aware that could make 11 nuclear bombs,” Witkoff told Fox.

    Trump has asserted that the US “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities during the 12-day war last June, which would ostensibly render Iran incapable of immediately turning that enriched uranium into a bomb.

    Still, Witkoff said the Iranian negotiators “were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”

    He said that during that first meeting, the Iranian negotiators insisted on “an inalienable right” to enrich their nuclear fuel.

    They now have an inalienable right to a pine box.

  • Ben Shapiro weighs in on the current state of the conflict, and declares Iran toast:

    • “I hope all the folks watching understand what uncontested airspace and complete control means. It means we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing, and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military. Finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders, flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the IRGC, Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only US and Israeli air power.”
    • We got the guy in charge of trying to assassinate American leaders, “Rahman Moadam, who’s head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps special operations division.”
    • Admiral Brad Cooper explains the status of the operation:

      More than 50,000 troops, 200 fighters, two aircraft carriers, and bombers from the United States are participating in this operation, and more capability is on the way. In the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury, US Central Command forces together with Israel delivered overwhelming and unprecedented strikes into Iran. Now, we’re less than 100 hours into this operation, and we’ve already struck nearly 2,000 targets with more than 2,000 munitions. We have severely degraded Iran’s air defenses and destroyed hundreds of Iran’s ballistic missiles, launchers, and drones. And in simple terms, we’re focused on shooting all the things that can shoot at us.

    • “We are also sinking the Iranian Navy. The entire Navy.”
    • “We will not stop.”
    • Back to Shapiro: U.S. consulate in Dubai was hit by drones. No casualties because it was evacuated.
    • “How do you know that Iran is really losing? Because Qatar has turned. So Qatar, which has always played this sort of middle ground between the United States and Iran. Well, now they’re turning on the IRGC and actually arresting members of the IRGC in Qatar.”
    • He debunks the myth that we’re using $2 million Patriot missiles to shoot down $35,000 drones, says most are being down down with $25,000 air-to-air missiles. “And you know who’s going to run out of $25,000 iterations more and faster? The US or the piss-poor Iranians?”
    • “If we get in a spending war with Iran, Iran don’t have no money. It is a problem for them.”
  • Jim Geraghty says that Iran is losing all its planes, ships, drones and missiles.

    The Iranian regime splits its air power between two forces, the conventional Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force and the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force. Available public information about the size of Iran’s air fleet is somewhat contradictory in the details. The independent analysis site WarPowerIran states Iran has 778 aircraft, but “while impressive in terms of available quantity of aircraft, the IRIAF suffers from an aging fleet and limited military-industrial capabilities as they relate to modern combat platforms.”

    Similarly, “FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2025 listed 65 F-4s, 35 F-5s, 41 F-14s, 18 MiG-29s, 21 Su-24s, and 12 Mirage F1s in the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, plus a smaller number of tankers and special-mission aircraft. Iran has also received an unknown number of Yak-130 light attack aircraft in recent years.”

    The Yak-130 is the most modern of those aircraft, but it’s really most suitable as a low-cost trainer. If you actually need to go up against F-22s and F-35s in that thing, you’re in deep, deep trouble. And indeed, an Israeli F-35 shot one down.

    Beyond that, it’s not an air force, it’s an impressive aviation museum. The MiG-29 is the only plane in active service with any modern military. The F-14 is the next most modern, and the vast majority of U.S. planes were deactivated in the late 20th century. The F-5 has proven really durable for Third World air forces, but no one mistakes it for a modern fighter. The F-4 is a Vietnam War staple retired everywhere except Greece, Turkey and Iran.

    The United Arab Emirates, a Defense Ministry spokesperson said air defenses detected 812 drones and intercepted 755, with 57 getting through and causing damage.

    Kuwait said it intercepted 283 drones. A Bloomberg-compiled tally put the first two days of the war at 541 drones targeted at the UAE, 283 at Kuwait, 36 at Jordan, 12 at Qatar and nine at Bahrain. Combined with the UAE’s later figure, the publicly reported totals indicate at least about 1,150 drones launched at regional targets since February 28, with the overall number likely higher.

    Naval sinkings stats snipped.

    During yesterday’s briefing, Caine released some figures indicating the Iranians are losing their ability to fire ballistic missiles and drones: “As of this morning, U.S. Central Command is making steady progress. Iran’s theater ballistic missile shots fired are down 86 percent from the first day of fighting, with a 23 percent decrease just in the last 24 hours, and their one-way attack drone shots are down 73 percent from the opening days.”

  • “Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s late Supreme Leader, has survived the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran in which his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, two Iranian sources told Reuters on Wednesday.” Maybe. But there’s a good chance that’s disinformation as well.
  • Iran’s various opposition groups sound pretty united on the future of the country.

    Iran’s democratic opposition groups — monarchists and republicans, secular and religious minorities, leftists, liberals, and every ethnicity — are united… on four foundational principles: Iran’s territorial integrity; individual liberties and equality of all citizens; separation of religion and state; and the Iranian people’s right to decide a democratic form of government. Many Iranians, often despite facing bullets, have called on me to lead this transition. I am in awe of their courage, and I have answered their call. Our path forward will be transparent: a new constitution drafted and ratified by referendum, followed by free elections under international oversight. When Iranians vote, the transitional government dissolves…. A free Iran would extend [the Abraham Accords] by immediately recognizing Israel and pursuing a broader regional peace framework linking Iran, Israel and our Arab neighbors in cooperation rather than conflict.

  • You can never depend on China as an ally:

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • More from Suchomimus on that Soleimani-class corvette sunk yesterday, which turns out to be the IRIS Shahid Sayyad Shirazi.

  • If Iran is currently the A-Plot in As the Middle East Burns, then the war against Hezbollah is the B-Plot. Israel has already started and air and ground campaign against the Iranian-backed group, and Simon Whistler explains the current state of that conflict:

    • “What’s happening in Lebanon right now might end up being one of the most consequential events of the entire war. Israel and Hezbollah are at war again.”
    • “What’s really significant here is what the Lebanese government just did in the middle of this. A total ban on Hezbollah’s military and security operations. If you would have told us that we’d be making an episode on that just two years ago, we would have thought you were dreaming. Or possibly really rather drunk.”
    • For years people assumed an attack on Iran would mean Hezbollah would unleash an unstoppable barrage of rockets on Israel.
    • Skipping over the glorious execution of Operation Grim Beeper.
    • “The Lebanese government chose, after decades of weakness, to go after Hezbollah. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s cabinet declared an immediate, total ban on all Hezbollah military and security activities and ordered the group to surrender its weapons to the state.”
    • “President Joseph Aoun, the former army commander who had been elected after Hezbollah could no longer block the vote, called the decision final.”
    • “In what has been the most notable development of all, Nabih Berri, the speaker of parliament and leader of the Amal movement, Hezbollah’s most reliable political partner for decades, refused to vote against the measure.” This is huge, since Amal is the only other Shia party in Lebanon’s parliament next to Hezbollah.
    • “There’s a pretty sizable camp in Washington that sees the current moment as the best chance anyone will ever have to finish Hezbollah off, and they’re not being quiet about it.”
    • Israel is haunted by it’s failure to destroy Hezbollah in its 2006 incursion, and by its inadvertent creation of Hezbollah following it’s 1982 incursion to go after the PLO.
    • “The situation today is genuinely different. First and foremost because the Lebanese state is the one driving the push to restore its sovereignty, backed by a president who seems absolutely determined to disarm the militants on his territory once and for all.” No, first and foremost, Iran is done. Without their funding, Hezbollah would be nothing.
    • “All of this is the complete opposite from 1982 and 2006, where it was variously an Israeli occupation force imposing order from the outside and an international community with very little legitimacy, respectively. This willingness was a long time in the making, but now that it’s surfaced, it doesn’t appear likely to be disappearing anytime soon.”
  • Related: “IDF Orders Mass Evacuation of Hezbollah Stronghold in Beirut Ahead of Strike.”
  • Add Azerbaijan to the list of countries droned by Iran:

  • And Azerbaijan is getting ready to retaliate. And Azeris make up about 16% of the Iranian population, which is actually higher than the number of Kurds…
  • Heh: “To Save Time, Iran Appoints Supreme Leader Who Is Already Dead.”

    • Again, this is what significant news I thought was worth including. If you have additional information you thought I should have included, leave it in the comments below.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, video | 1 Comment »

    Venezuela Fallout Roundup For January 5, 2026

    Monday, January 5th, 2026

    Here’s a roundup of Venezuela news since the successful operation to snatch him on Saturday.

  • Will Venezuela’s leaders play ball with President Trump? Signs point to yes.

    At a moment Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and his wife Flores are set to appear before a New York federal judge on various drug-trafficking and gun-running related charges, his VP and now apparently Interim President Delcy Rodriguez is offering a huge olive branch.

    This is unsurprising given the staunchly socialist, pro-Maduro number two under the ousted president is herself under immense pressure from Washington, and still facing down the barrel of Uncle Sam’s gun – or rather the collective might of the Pentagon’s persisting US naval blockade just off Latin America’s coast.

    he’s quickly expressed her willingness to cooperate with the United States on the future of Venezuela, in a significant shift in tone following Maduro’s Friday into Saturday morning ‘shock’ abduction by US special forces.

    “We consider it a priority to move towards a balanced and respectful relationship between the US and Venezuela,” Rodriguez wrote on Telegram Sunday.

    And more than that, her following words convey willingness of Caracas to bend the knee: “We extend an invitation to the US government to work together on a cooperation agenda, aimed at shared development, within the framework of international law, and to strengthen lasting community coexistence,” she stated.

    Snip.

    President Trump has warned that if authorities in Venezuela fail to cooperate, the United States would carry out a second strike on Venezuela, noting that any decision to deploy ground troops there would depend on how the situation develops and how Venezuela responds.

    So cooperate with the United States in transition to a Democratic, non-Socialist government (and presumably retire to seized mansions with shares of their ill-gotten loot), or get droned. This should be an easy choice…

  • So who’s in charge of Venezuela now? President Trump says we are.

    President Donald Trump said the United States will “run” Venezuela until a peaceful transition of power is executed, following an operation carried out in the Latin American country early Saturday morning that successfully captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

    “We’re going to run this country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said from Mar-a-Lago during a press conference. “We want peace, liberty, and justice for the great people of Venezuela, and that includes many from Venezuela that are now living in the United States and want to go back to their country. It’s their homeland.”

    Asked on Saturday who would be running the country, Trump said that they would be designating people but that, “for a period of time,” it would largely be those standing behind him at the press conference — apparently meaning Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine.

    The United States is in Venezuela, and will remain in the country until a “proper transition can take place,” Trump said.

    General Caine said the attack was known as “Operation Absolute Resolve.” The president clarified that no American lives or military equipment were lost during the operation, and the embargo on Venezuelan oil also remains in full effect.

  • Just how dominant America’s military was in carrying out the operation is covered by this France24 clip:

    • “Only the US can carry out this kind of mission, so far from home at such a scale and with such coordination.”
    • “At least they’re the only country to have proved that they can still do it.”
    • “And now when we hear that jargon from Dan Caine about air and space support providing layering effects. That’s not just firepower, but it’s everything that’s needed to protect those helicopters as they went into that highly defended capital city and got out again. This requires not just the latest in satellite technology, high-tech jamming, stealth drones, but also just months of old school intelligence, fighter jet platforms that have been tried and tested over decades, and of course, sheer numbers just to provide that operational redundancy.”
    • The U.S. also managed to blackout Caracas during the attack.
    • “We can assume that the Space Force obviously provided latest state-of-the-art mapping to their forces, and potentially threw Venezuelan tracking off the scent as well. The Americans would have also used their EA-18G Growler aircraft which we know were involved. They have highly sophisticated jamming technology. The F-35s that were used can also use electronic warfare capabilities and jamming. So that could well have knocked out a lot of the Venezuelan radar.”

    Combined arms are hard, but no one does them as well, or has the sheer reach, of the United States military.

  • More on just how the operation was carried out.

    The public narrative, stitched together from US statements and multiple reports, looks like this: months of planning, a narrow window, a rapid “snatch” mission at a heavily protected residence, and a fast exfiltration under fire.

    Thank to reporting by the New York Times, we know the CIA has been on the ground in Venezuela for some time. They were almost certainly collecting the intelligence necessary for this exact operation.

    US officials described a five-hour operation with more than 150 aircraft launching from roughly 20 bases across the Western Hemisphere, with a helicopter-borne ground force as the core maneuver element.

    If those numbers are accurate, this was not a raid. This was a joint campaign compressed into one night.

    Start with the centerpiece: USS Iwo Jima.

    A quick aside: When I was in high school in Texas, I was a member of the Air Force junior ROTC. We were invited to march in three Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans, and we stayed aboard the USS Iwo Jima while we were there.

    A Wasp-class LHD is a Swiss Army knife that swims. It gives you a flight deck, fuel, maintenance, command spaces, medical capacity, and the ability to surge rotary-wing sorties without asking anyone’s permission to use their runway.

    If you want to push helicopters into a denied or semi-denied area and pull them back out fast, a big-deck amphib is the kind of platform you park nearby.

    That matters because the reported “tip of the spear” was US special operations aviation. Multiple reports point to a large contingent of 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment or SOAR helicopters, also called the Night Stalkers, involved.

    The 160th’s whole personality is flying low, at night, in bad weather, into places that don’t want them there, and bringing your people home anyway.

    For reference, it was the Night Stalkers who played a critical role in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden (Operation Neptune Spear).

    I’ve personally ridden with the Night Stalkers at Fort Campbell while in the Army… They can do some crazy shit with helicopters. I should note that I was not special forces, I was just hitching a ride as a grunt.

    In Venezuela, those helicopters carried US Army Delta Force soldiers along with FBI agents who would perform the actual snatch (or kill if Maduro resisted).

    Some readers might be wondering what the difference is between Delta Force and a group like the US Navy SEALs.

    Well, first of all, SEALs always have a promising career in Hollywood waiting for them after their service… Or a lucrative book deal. Fucking prima donnas.

    Delta are the “quiet professionals”.

    Jokes aside, Delta Force and SEAL teams are both elite Tier 1 special mission units under JSOC, handling complex counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and direct action missions, but differ in their backgrounds and specializations. Delta excels in land-based, covert operations, while SEAL Team Six (DEVGRU) retains maritime roots, training SEALs for sea-based operations.

    SEALs could have easily performed this operation and they may have been involved, but my initial sources are telling me it was Delta.

    Reports from multiple outlets confirm that FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) agents, physically executed the takedown of Nicolás Maduro inside Caracas.

    That pairing, America’s most elite special mission unit (Delta) and its most capable federal law enforcement strike team, is unusual but not unprecedented.

    It signals one important thing: Washington wanted Maduro alive and in custody, not vaporized.

    Delta Force, formally known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Airborne), is the Army’s top-tier counterterrorism and direct action unit. Their bread and butter isn’t messy firefights or holding ground, it’s surgical raids, high-value target snatches, and hostage rescue under conditions that would make most mortals short-circuit.

    If a door needs breaching in a palace defended by an armored brigade, Delta is who goes through it.

    The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, meanwhile, exists in that strange intersection between domestic law enforcement and tactical counterterrorism. They’re federal agents first but trained to the same operational standard as their military counterparts.

    When American leadership needs a mission with law enforcement optics like arrest warrants, indictments, legal custody, the HRT adds the thin blue veneer that separates an extradition from an invasion.

    In practice, the operation probably looked like this: Delta cleared the perimeter and neutralized armed resistance. HRT followed close behind, securing the detainees and beginning immediate chain-of-custody procedures to satisfy Justice Department requirements.

    The Night Stalkers with their Delta/FBI contingent were supported by an impressive stack of US military hardware: F-22s, F-35s, F/A-18s, EA-18s, E-2s, B-1 bombers, Sentry, and “numerous” remotely piloted aircraft.

    F-22s are air dominance and high-end insurance. They deter or swat down any manned aerial response, and they do it before the other side’s pilots finish their climb.

    F-35s are the quiet burglars. They sniff emitters, map threats, and cue strikes. If you want to dismantle air defenses quickly, you bring the jet that was built to hunt radars. We currently don’t know how many air defense systems the F-35s removed, but I’m sure we will learn more in the coming days.

    F/A-18s and EA-18Gs are the Navy’s workhorses for strike and electronic attack. The Growler exists to turn an air defense network into a migraine.

    An E-2 Hawkeye is the Navy’s “baby Sentry” airborne battle management. It gives the air picture, deconflicts assets, and helps keep fratricide from becoming the main headline.

    B-1s presence signals: if you escalate, we will flatten the area. They also provide standoff fires and a psychological effect that Venezuelan air defenders will be aware of.

    E-3 Sentry is the quarterback.

    I doubt B-1s were on call, but the presence of the other assets seems logical. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • Suchomimus has a detailed look at exactly where U.S. forces landed near Maduro’s bunker to capture him, and what Venezuelan military equipment they took out in the process:

    • Among those taken out was a Russian 9K37 Buk SAM system. “Russian air defense systems proving to be just as useless in Venezuela as they are in Ukraine and Russia.”
    • “There were some reports a few weeks back that Russia tried to bulk up Venezuela’s air defense by sending two S300 launchers and two book SAM systems, as well as up to a dozen to SAM systems as well….And all for naught. The American operation was a complete success, with zero American aircraft shot down.”
  • Did Chinese radar also fail?

  • How are ordinary Venezuelans taking Maduro’s capture? They’re celebrating:

  • Heh:

  • Triggernometry adds some background on just how much socialism in Venezuela sucks:

    Plus this: “Nicholas’s Maduros’s nephews were captured by the DA in Haiti with kilos of cocaine. They were brought here. They went to trial. They were declared guilty. And then Biden pardoned them and sent them back.”

    Maybe part of the eventual settlement with Venezuela can include banks records for all regime payments to American politicos…

  • And speaking of Democrats, they’re melting down over Maduro’s capture.

    While Venezuelans hit the streets in wild celebration, popping bottles and celebrating freedom, Democrats in Washington, D.C., clutched their pearls and went into full meltdown mode, accusing Trump of getting us into a war and violating the Constitution.

    “Trump’s unilateral operation last night was an illegal act of war without Congress’s authorization,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) claimed.

    “Maduro is a brutal dictator who has oppressed the Venezuelan people, but our constitution does not yield for bad people. If Congress is to survive as an institution, the Republican majority must join us exercising our power to hold this administration accountable for this flagrant violation of the constitution.”

    He wasn’t the only Democrat to claim that Trump acted illegally.

    “Without authorization from Congress, and with the vast majority of Americans opposed to military action, Trump just launched an unjustified, illegal strike on Venezuela,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) claimed.

    “He says we don’t have enough money for healthcare for Americans—but somehow we have unlimited funds for war??”

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also chimed in.

    “President Trump’s unilateral military action to attack another country and seize Maduro — no matter how terrible a dictator he is — is unconstitutional and threatens to drag the U.S. into further conflicts in the region,” she argued.

    “The American people voted for lower costs, not for Trump’s dangerous military adventurism overseas that won’t make the American people safer.”

    Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) similarly accused Trump of getting the United States into an “illegal” war.

    “This war is illegal, it’s embarrassing that we went from the world cop to the world bully in less than one year,” he said.

    But these claims don’t hold water.

    “Trump does not need congressional approval for this type of operation,” explains constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley. “Presidents, including Democratic presidents, have launched lethal attacks regularly against individuals. President Barack Obama killed an American citizen under this ‘kill list’ policy. If Obama can vaporize an American citizen without even a criminal charge, Trump can capture a foreign citizen with a pending criminal indictment without prior congressional approval.”

  • You know who else hates Maduro’s capture? The current leaders of China, Russia and Iran.

    President Trump’s historic intervention in Venezuela offers needed hope to friends of freedom around the world and nervous traders in the oil market.

    A pro-America, free-market government could unleash the country’s oil potential and lower energy prices around the globe. This is bad news for the Kremlin and clerics in Iran, who need high oil prices to perpetuate their regimes.

    For decades, Venezuela’s socialist leaders have plunged their country into a black hole of poverty. Populist leader Hugo Chavez promised his voters unlimited riches. Nicolás Maduro, Chavez’s hand-picked successor, turned those hopes into an economic nightmare.

    Chavez and Maduro seized the infrastructure of American oil firms in their country and ran the national economy into the ground. Under Maduro’s rule, the economic decline in Venezuela has been worse than the Great Depression in the US.

    In the 1930s, America’s GDP declined by 30%.

    Under Maduro, Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by about 75%, and Moscow and Beijing have been circling like vultures.

    Last year, China purchased around 568,000 barrels per day from Venezuela; and Beijing needs Venezuela to fuel its economy. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has been keen to keep the Maduro regime as a proxy in the Western Hemisphere.

    The loss of Maduro in Caracas, who has welcomed Russian weapons and support to prop up his wobbly regime, is a major blow to Moscow. It also sends a powerful message to dictators around the world who look to America’s rivals as an alternative to US leadership: When the chips are down, Putin and Xi Jinping can’t help you.

    While Maduro was in power, both Putin and Xi were eager to include oil-rich Venezuela in their “Axis of Aggressors.”

    Trump abruptly changed the geopolitical balance by putting Maduro in handcuffs. He can now put more pressure on Beijing and box out Moscow’s hopes for a sustained partnership with Caracas.

    The clerics in Tehran are also worried. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps needs Venezuela to enable its sanctions-evasion schemes that were in place under Maduro. Worse, the ghost tanker fleet that serviced the IRGC out of Venezuela is now in jeopardy. And with the prospect of increased Venezuelan oil exports, there’s a potential opportunity to put a squeeze on all remaining Iranian oil.

    Funny how often Democrats are on the save wavelength as the dictators in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran when it comes to opposing Donald Trump’s foreign policy successes…

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Military, video | 11 Comments »

    More Iran Strike Followup

    Thursday, July 3rd, 2025

    There’s still more fallout (metaphorical, not literal) from Operation Midnight Hammer, so let’s do a roundup.

  • For all the debate over the extent of damage America inflicted on Iran’s nuclear program, the IAEA seems to think it’s been destroyed.

    Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, discussed the state of Iran’s nuclear program on Sunday on CBS News’ Face the Nation; the interview was taped Friday:

    I think you can pick and choose any adjective to characterize this, but you will see that there is an agreement in describing this as a very serious level of damage. It can be, you know, described in different ways, but it’s clear that what happened in particular in Fordo, Natanz, Isfahan, where Iran used to have and still has, to some degree, capabilities in terms of treatment, conversion and enrichment of uranium have been destroyed to an important degree. Some is still standing. So there is, of course, an important setback in terms of those — of those capabilities. This is — this is clear. And now the important issue — the important thing is, what are the next steps? Now the characterization of the damage, I think we can, you know, speculate, and still, until, of course, the Iranians themselves will have to go there and sift through the, you know, rubble and look at what is the exact degree of the damage. At some point, the IAEA will have to return. Although our job is not to assess damage, but to re-establish the knowledge of the activities that take place there, and the access to the material, which is very, very important, the material that they will be producing if they continue with this activity. This is contingent on other, you see, everything is connected. This is — this is contingent on negotiations which may or may not restart, so — so what we see this here, I think we have a snapshot of- of- of a program which has been very seriously damaged, to quote Dr. Araghchi. And now what we need to focus on is on the next steps. [Emphasis added.]

    Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Thursday that the country’s nuclear facilities had sustained “significant and serious damages,” the first official acknowledgment of the extent of the damages caused by U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites.

    The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran was still “surveilling the damages and losses,” Mr. Araghchi said in an interview with Iran’s state television. But, he added, “I have to say, the losses have not been small, and our facilities have been seriously damaged.”

  • “The United States’ B-2 stealth bomber strike on Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment facility was the culmination of more than 15 years of study and planning.”

    [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan “Razin”] Caine detailed the military planning that began in 2009 to design a purpose-built method to knock out the Fordow facility, which is buried hundreds of feet underground in a mountainous region of Iran.

    Caine shed new light on the role of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an organization tasked with preparing bespoke solutions to destroy highly sensitive targets, including emerging weapons of mass destruction.

    “DTRA does a lot of things for our nation, but DTRA is the world’s leading expert on deeply buried, underground targets,” Caine said.

    “In 2009, a Defense Threat Reduction Agency officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran,” Caine said, declining to identify the DTRA officer by name.

    This DTRA officer, and another unnamed member of the agency, were then tasked to work with the intelligence community to study the construction of the Fordow site.

    “For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target: Fordow, a critical element of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program,” Caine said.

    The two DTRA employees spent years studying everything from the geology surrounding Fordow, to the construction materials and other equipment arriving at the facility, so they could model the site and devise a plan.

    “They literally dreamed about this target at night when they slept,” Caine said.

    In the course of their study of the Fordow facility, Caine said the pair of DTRA employees leading the project soon determined the U.S. military did not have a weapon that could adequately address the challenge the fortified Iranian nuclear facility presented.

    “So, they began a journey to work with industry and other tacticians to develop the GBU-57,” Caine said.

    The GBU-57, also known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) or bunker-buster, is a 30,000-pound bomb designed to burrow and explode deep underground.

    Military planners then spent years testing the bomb, specifically for the Fordow facility.

    “They tested it over and over again. … They accomplished hundreds of test shots, and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose: kill this target at the time and place of our nation’s choosing,” Caine said.

    Each GBU-57 is “bespokely” designed for a specific target. He said each one dropped on the Fordow facility “had a unique desired impact angle, arrival, final heading, and fuse” corresponding to its role in the overall mission.n addition to live-testing the GBU-57, Caine said the program to develop the heavy bunker-buster involved extensive and complex computing.

    “In the beginning of its development, we had so many PhDs working on the MOP program, doing modeling and simulation, that we were quietly and in a secret way, the biggest users of supercomputer-hours within the United States of America,” he said.

    Snip.

    While Caine said the intelligence community is still assessing the true damage of the U.S. strike, he indicated military planners are confident the strike was successful, based on their understanding of the weapons they used, and the fact that each weapon was observed acting as it was intended.

    “The weapons were built, tested, and loaded properly,” he said. “Two, the weapons were released on-speed and on-parameters. Three, the weapons all guided to their intended targets and to their intended aim points. Four, the weapons functioned as designed, meaning they exploded.”

    Caine also described the account of a U.S. fighter pilot who escorted the bomber formation and watched the bomb blasts, who Caine quoted as saying, “This was the brightest explosion that I’ve ever seen. It literally looked like daylight.”

    Snip.

    Hegseth then read off a list of statements, including from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, the Iranian Foreign Ministry, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and others, assessing that the June 21 strike caused extensive damage to Iran’s nuclear program.

    (Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)

  • Europe’s response to the Iran strike is now in, and it’s a resounding “meh.”

    For those accustomed to continental condemnation toward Israel on Gaza, European leaders’ support for the nation’s ferocious campaign to strike Iran’s nuclear program was probably one of the many shocks of the past two weeks.

    Consider these statements from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz:

    “There is no reason for us, or for me personally, to criticize what Israel started a week ago, nor is there any reason to criticize what America did last weekend.”

    “The evidence that Iran is continuing on its path to building a nuclear weapon can no longer be seriously disputed.”

    “This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.”

    Merz noted that the actions were not “without risk” and has since turned attention back to Gaza in calling for a cease-fire there. Reactions from other top European leaders were more qualified regarding the Israeli-U.S. operation — but still supportive of the overall goal of preventing a nuclear-armed Iran and understanding of Israel’s desire to eliminate that risk.

    French President Emmanuel Macron said there was “no legality” to America’s strikes, while acknowledging France “supports the objective of preventing Iran from getting the nuclear bomb.” Earlier, he said Israeli strikes that hit “civilian or energy facilities” must stop, while conceding that Iran posed an “existential risk” for Israel. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling for de-escalation and negotiation, said in a video on X, “We’ve long had concerns about the Iranian nuclear program,” and described the prospect of Iran getting a nuclear weapon as “the greatest threat to stability in the region.”

    A joint statement from all three leaders last weekend affirmed that Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon” and urged the country to engage in negotiations. It put the onus on Iran “not to take any further action that could destabilize the region.”

    Before the American strike, even European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself and protect its people” while calling for de-escalation and restraint from both sides. NR’s Michael Brendan Dougherty, marking these “strange days,” also flagged the effusive praise for President Trump’s handling of Iran from NATO’s secretary-general.

    We can infer from these reactions a few things.

    One, the determinations of the International Atomic Energy Agency indeed rattled the Europeans as well as the Israelis. As NR’s original editorial on Israel’s strikes noted, “Iran had significantly ramped up its enrichment capacity, with even the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (not exactly friendly to Israeli militarism) having determined that Iran had been enriching uranium well beyond the level of civilian use, and closer to military grade.”

    Two, Iran’s support for Russia in its war against Ukraine — via cooperation on the production of attack drones for use on the battlefield — has won Tehran few sympathizers inside Europe’s political establishment.

    Three, relatedly, Europe’s well-founded fear of Iran is greater than its misgivings about Israel, given Iran’s history of targeting regime opponents there.

  • “Israel is calling on three European countries to enact the UN Security Council’s ‘snapback’ mechanism regarding Iran sanctions.”

    Israel is calling on three European countries, Britain, France, and Germany — known as the E-3 — to enact the UN Security Council’s “snapback” mechanism regarding Iran sanctions. A clause in the 2015 council resolution that endorsed that year’s Iran nuclear deal allows each of the deal parties to automatically reimpose all global sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

    For now, though, “there’s murmur about snapback, but nothing more than that,” a UN-based diplomat tells the Sun. He noted that time is limited for enacting the mechanism.

    America, Britain, France, Germany, Communist China, and Russia can unilaterally trigger the option, and no veto could block the snapback. Council members, however, rejected an American attempt to snap back the sanctions after President Trump left the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018. The E-3, though, might still enact it.

    • There’s an easy way for Iran to avoid further bombings: Stop trying to build nuclear weapons.

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    Fordow Damage Assessment

    Sunday, June 22nd, 2025

    Suchomimus has a video up on the U.S. strike on Fordow:

  • “We have satellite imagery now confirming the US strike on Fordow nuclear enrichment facility.”
  • “I have two images for you. This first one shows two areas hit as shown by the orange circle. You can see three holes highlighting the bottom one and three in the top. So these are very accurate and precise strikes by the US Air Force, landing three bombs each around each target area.”
  • “Now the type of bomb used here penetrates deep underground before detonating. So whilst the image may not look like much damage has [been] caused, that won’t be the case, because these would have penetrated deep. And if we reach the complex below, then this facility is going to be in a pretty bad way.”
  • “This second image shows us the strikes hit the ridge line. This is important because this little schematic here shows what’s underneath this area. So you can see that this area is the hub of the facility. This graphic video was shared by Iran until a few years ago, and it shows this enrichment facility. So you can see that in the are that was targeted we have the uranium storage a pair of IR6 and then six IR1 cascade centrifuges.”
  • “American intelligence and other sources online are saying that this facility is destroyed and that the strike was successful and penetrated it.”
  • “We have the entry points highlighted. Here on the right the land caved inwards post strike, and at the bottom the tunnel entrances sealed with dirt.” The latter evidently done by the Iranians.
  • Before the strike, video shows Iranian trucks lined up at the complex entrance. But the trucks look like open-roofed earth moving vehicles, not equipment transport vehicles. These were apparently used to cover the entrances with dirt.
  • However, there were a couple more specialized vehicles that may have been used to remove enriched uranium from the site.
  • “I can’t see everything important being evacuated in a couple of days. There’s bound to have been some equipment, some important equipment, left in here. The centrifuges, for example, can feasibly be dismantled and removed by truck, but is tricky to do, because of a base’s depth and will take time. And I think it’s unlikely Iran would have had enough time to do so. But Reuters does say that the enriched uranium had already been removed.”

    • Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says that initial battle damage assessment showed “all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect, which means, especially in Fordow, which was the primary target here, we believe we achieved destruction of capabilities there.”

    More:

    B-2 Spirit bombers dropped a total of 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or MOPs, on two of the Iranian nuclear facility sites struck this weekend as part of “Operation Midnight Hammer,” Air Force Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Sunday.

    President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that the U.S. military had attacked three facilities involved with Iran’s nuclear program at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.

    The mission marked the first operational use of the 30,000-pound MOP, the largest B-2 bomber strike in history, and the second-longest B-2 mission ever flown, Caine said during a Pentagon news conference. In order to deceive the Iranians, a number of B-2s flew west as decoys prior to the strike, he said.

    Snip.

    Defense officials showed reporters a graphic during Sunday’s news conference that indicated that seven B-2 bombers took part in the strikes.

    A total of 125 aircraft were involved in the mission, including fighters and aerial refuelers, Caine said. The bombers and fighters dropped about 75 precision-guided munitions on two of the sites, and a Navy submarine fired Tomahawk missiles at a third.

    Possibly more later.

    Update: A more detailed Suchomimus damage assessment video:

    I had heard chatter about using a ventilation shaft to hit the facility, because surely the Iranians wouldn’t be so stupid as to to use a vertical shaft that leads directly to the bunker complex rather than a horizontal one. But that seems to be the case.

    Plus damage details for the Natanz and Isfahan sites. At least some of the 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators seem to have targeted Natanz, with the Tomahawks hitting Isfahan.

    Also, U.S. graphics suggest the B-2s were actually flown from Whitman Airbase in Missouri, rather than Diego Garcia, as previously reported. Maybe that too was deception.

    Update 2 via Ed Dirscoll at Instapundit: Israel seems to think that the 60% enriched Uranium was at Natanz and Isfahan, which was hit in the strike, and now they have no way to get it to 90%.

    Update 3 via Charlie Martin at Instapundit: Ex-spy Aimen Dean doesn’t buy the “they dismantled everything” narrative:

    1. Real-Time Monitoring by the IAEA:
    Both Fordow and Natanz are under partial surveillance by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While Iran has restricted access in recent years, many of the monitoring systems – especially CCTV cameras – were active in the past and still provided some insight until at least early 2023. In several cases, the IAEA retained knowledge of infrastructure layouts and could remotely detect large-scale activity, especially if dismantling or evacuation were attempted.

    2. The Myth of Rapid Evacuation:
    This isn’t a warehouse full of sacks of potatoes. We’re talking about highly specialized, sensitive equipment, thousands of IR-1 and advanced IR-2m and IR-6 centrifuges. For context:
    •Natanz had an estimated 15,000–20,000 centrifuges at peak capacity. Even after the JCPOA, thousands remained in use or storage.
    •Fordow, while smaller, housed over 1,000 advanced centrifuges, some enriching uranium up to 60% purity in recent years.

    These are not items that can be boxed up and trucked out overnight. Dismantling a single cascade (a chain of 164 centrifuges) safely requires days of work, if not longer. Multiply that by hundreds of cascades, and you quickly realize this isn’t a quick getaway.

    Additionally, centrifuges are connected to high-pressure uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6) lines. Improper disassembly can lead to contamination, equipment damage, or worse, leaks of radioactive gas. Such evacuations would require weeks of preparation under controlled conditions.

    3. Eyes in the Sky and on the Ground:
    Let’s not forget that the U.S. and Israel have had persistent, layered surveillance over these sites for years, satellites, high-altitude drones, SIGINT, HUMINT. Every inch of ground around Fordow and Natanz has been watched for telltale signs of activity. The idea that Iran stealthily evacuated multiple facilities without being detected is simply ludicrous.

    4. Propaganda to Salvage Prestige:
    This entire narrative is damage control, plain and simple. The regime knows its core scientific and strategic assets were hit. They can’t admit it, so they spin: “We were too smart for them. Nothing of value was lost.” But it’s hollow bravado, masking what is in reality a colossal strategic failure – yet another one – in a long line of catastrophic blunders by a leadership that has brought nothing but ruin to a once-proud civilization.

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