The Pentagon has admitted that Iran's nuclear program has been set back by at most two years

 

The IAEA's Grossi says neither Israel nor the United States has obliterated Iran's capacity to make war

 

Trump & Co. played up Fordow from the beginning because they knew they couldn't do anything about Isfahan

 US did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran’s nuclear sites, top general tells lawmakers, citing depth of the target 

... The comment by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, which was described by three people who heard his remarks and a fourth who was briefed on them, is the first known explanation given for why the US military did not use the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb against the Isfahan site in central Iran. US officials believe Isfahan’s underground structures house nearly 60% of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran would need in order to ever produce a nuclear weapon. ... Isfahan was only struck by Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine. ... 

An early assessment produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency in the day after the US strikes said the attack did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program, including its enriched uranium, and likely only set the program back by months, CNN has reported. It also said Iran may have moved some of the enriched uranium out of the sites before they were attacked. ...

Caine and Hegseth on Thursday said the military operation against Fordow went exactly as planned but did not mention the impacts to Isfahan and Natanz. 

The emphasis on Fordow from the beginning was intentional, because they knew they couldn't do anything about Isfahan.

You know, like "Look over there! A deer!"

 

 

 

 

Trump is the Uniparty, floats an Iran policy similar to Obama's

 

Trump administration exploring $30 billion civilian nuclear deal for Iran

 

... The potential deal would mark a major reversal in policy for President Trump, who pulled the U.S. out of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 arguing in part that the sanctions relief and unfreezing of Iranian assets had provided a “lifeline of cash” to the Iranian regime to continue its malign activities. ... 

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which said Iran possessed 400kg of highly enriched uranium on June 12, says they'd have to go to the bomb sites to really know the extent of the damage caused by the U.S. attacks

 

Iran’s nuclear facilities “suffered enormous damage” from the U.S. airstrikes Saturday, but more extensive evaluation is needed, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said Thursday.

“I think ‘annihilated’ is too much, but it has suffered enormous damage,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Rafael Grossi told French broadcaster RFI. “I know there’s a lot of debate about the degree of annihilation, total destruction, and so on, what I can tell you, and I think everyone agrees on this, is that very considerable damage has been done.”

“Obviously, you have to go to the site and that is not easy, there is debris and it is no longer an operational facility,” he added.

More. 

Obliteration schmobliteration

 

Islamist suicide bombers kill at least 20 Christians, wound many more, during mass in Damascus church a day after the U.S. attacks on Iran's nuclear enrichment sites

 

At the Mar Elias Church in the Dweila neighborhood of Syria's capital Damascus on Sunday.

It's a good thing

 

So, a White House official supposedly told FOX News that use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iranian nuke facilities is not off the table

 The idiot who did this map didn't know that B-2 Spirit Bombers are based at Whiteman Airforce Base in Missouri.

Also, the idiot from the White House should be an ex-official. 

Real Clear Politics runs post by a comedian telling us Iran never invaded anybody and Donald Trump would ruin his presidency by starting a war against it

 In Rob Schneider's world Iran never funded Hamas which invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, never built and launched wave after wave of ballistic missiles at Israeli civilians, never enriched enough uranium to build over a dozen nuclear weapons, never promised over and over again death to Israel and death to America. 

Truly hilarious.

 

 

Trump says America First means whatever he says it means, like Iran cannot have nuclear weapons lol

 

Trump's "movement" is divided because Trump doesn't agree with the anti-war side represented by Tucker Carlson

 

Mark Levin is urging Donald Trump to join Israel in a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities

 Mark Levin is up against many individuals in the Trump administration who are anti-war, including J. D. Vance in particular, and Tulsi Gabbard.

Former national security adviser Mike Waltz was of the same mind as Mark Levin.

Inside the MAGA vs. hawk battle to sway Trump on bombing Iran

Gabbard warns of ‘nuclear holocaust’ in ominous social media video

 

In the age of everything that is good is awesome, everything bad must be an emergency

 The Zeitgeist is epitomized by a general hysteria, incapable of proportional thinking and hostile to reason, and so it should come as no surprise that our new leadership is exploiting that for its own ends, mostly to distract you while they make money hand over fist.

Everything is awesome. Everyone is great.

But everything is also a disaster, and the worst ever.

COVID was going to kill us all. The vaccines were going to save us all.

Biden was going to cure cancer. RFK Jr is going to solve the mystery of autism by September.

All those people streaming across the border during the Biden administration were seeking asylum. Now under Trump they were an invading enemy army.

The recession of 2008 had to be The Great Recession, or The Great Financial Crisis, as if 10.7% unemployment in 4Q1982 was the golden age of Ronald Reagan, and over 3,000 savings and loans didn't go belly up during that decade and part of the next.

Heat waves and cold waves are unprecedented, unless you talk to an old person. We have 12 years left before global warming kills us all.

Putin is going to launch a thermonuclear WWIII, same as Saddam Hussein.

So of course trade deficits are suddenly an emergency.

U.S. businesses sue to block Trump tariffs, say trade deficits are not an emergency

 

I guess we'll just have to have a Fourth Reich, then, armed to the teeth with nukes: Millennials Pete Hegseth and J. D. Vance think the Europeans are freeloaders

 

In the chats, the user identified as Vice President JD Vance expresses concerns about the strikes but ultimately agrees to go along with US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth's plan - before adding 'I just hate bailing Europe out again.'

Hegseth responds: 'I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's PATHETIC.' 

And of course they want to throw Mike Waltz under the bus:

There are claims that Mr Waltz is facing the sack over the saga - as he's believed to have been the official who 'added the editor-in-chief [of The Atlantic] to the group'.

One source told Politico: 'Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a f***ing idiot.'

The Financial Times reports that privately some German officials are starting to wonder out loud whether the time has come to acquire their own nuclear arsenal.

Gold and silver don't care about one of these, crypto on the other hand . . .

 

Putin says medium range ballistic missile was used against Ukraine, not ICBM, but still nuclear capable

 Quoted here:

“In response to the use of American and British long-range weapons, on Nov 21 of this year, the Russian armed forces launched a combined strike on one of the facilities of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine.

“In combat conditions, one of the newest Russian medium-range missile systems was tested, among other things. In this case, with a ballistic missile in a nuclear-free hypersonic equipment.”

Bill Gertz: US speeds up development of new, lighter W93 warhead for US Navy's new Columbia class boomers to help counter Chicoms' new ICBM fields

 The story is here.

Boston Globe editorial board downplays illegal immigration threat, misrepresents Gallup survey which said immigration is Americans' top unprompted concern

 From the Gallup survey:

 

For the second straight month, immigration leads Americans’ unprompted answers about what most ails the nation, with inflation also figuring prominently. ...

Immigration Is Americans’ Top Unprompted Concern

Gallup also measures Americans’ views of national concerns monthly by asking them to name, unprompted, what they believe is the most important problem facing the country today. This question format is asked before the list of issue concerns in the survey and yields a slightly different conclusion, finding immigration ranking ahead of inflation. Overall, 28% of Americans, the same as in February and the most for any issue, name immigration as the top problem. That essentially ties the 27% reading from July 2019 as the highest since Gallup started compiling mentions of immigration in 1981.

 

But here's the Boston Globe:

Late last month, the venerable Gallup company released a survey listing the most pressing concerns in the United States. Predictably topping the list were inflation and crime, followed by hunger and homelessness, the economy broadly, and the high cost of health care. Farther back were things like illegal immigration, drug use, and the environment.

 

When Gallup asks Americans to rank their concerns about a list of problems, immigration is placed seventh in the list. By the time your average person gets to number seven, he's already forgotten what he said about one, two, three, four, and five.

But you can see from that list what really concerns most people: their weight.

Take the combined "worrying a great deal" and "a fair amount" about any of the fourteen problems and you will see that NUMERO UNO is . . . hunger and homelessness at 80%.

Yet homelessness affected fewer than 600,000 people in 2022.

And hunger? Hunger is now about "food insecurity", not starving. My fat cat is food insecure if I fail to keep her food bowl full. Two-thirds of adults are overweight, 40% of whom are obese, and there's a weight-loss-drug mania out there.

No, Americans are worried about the obscenely high cost of housing and that they'll end up on the street begging for the food Joe Biden's inflation made unaffordable if they lose their jobs, which is highly likely with 10 million illegals he let in competing for their positions.

But yeah, worry about nuclear war with The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

Oppenheimer's deep involvement with the communist Haakon Chevalier began as early as 1937 at UC Berkeley

Allan H. Ryskind, here:

The FBI had opened a file on Oppenheimer as early as 1941, after he had failed to immediately inform superiors that three men in Berkeley, California, had been solicited to obtain nuclear secrets for the Soviet Union and that both he and his brother Frank had been urged to help them. One of his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley was Haakon Chevalier, who worked with Oppenheimer on various Communist enterprises and who urged him to give Soviet Union Premier Josef Stalin what he wanted.

The Bureau opened its file on Oppenheimer after he had attended a December, 1940, meeting at Chevalier's home that was also attended by the Communist Party's California state secretary William Schneiderman and its treasurer Isaac Folkoff, each of whom was being wiretapped by the FBI.

In early 1943, Chevalier had a brief conversation with Oppenheimer in Chevalier's kitchen, with Chevalier mentioning that a scientist, George Eltenton, could transmit information of a technical nature to the Soviet Union about our progress on the highly secretive atomic bomb project that Oppenheimer was working on.

He initially rejected the overture to assist Eltenton but failed to report the incident until August of 1943. His failure to promptly report what was clearly a Soviet espionage effort would become central to the decision to revoke his security clearance. Oppenheimer did not report the recruitment effort until six months later. In subsequent interviews with Army security, he admitted he had been approached, but he refused to name Chevalier or anyone else who might have been involved. Not until December, 1943, in response to a direct order from Groves, did he name Chevalier.

From 1937 to 1942, he was a member at Berkeley of what he called "a discussion group," which was later identified by fellow members Chevalier and Gordon Griffiths as a "closed" or "secret" unit of the Communist Party for Berkeley faculty.