CNN argues that the strikes on Iran’s nuclear program were a nothingburger
There’s no reason to believe CNN. But even a stopped clock is correct twice a day.
My position on the subject of the amount of damage sustained by Iran to its nuclear program continues to be: no one knows or sure, but there certainly was plenty of damage. You can find what I believe may be a fairly good article on the matter here. An excerpt:
On June 21, the United States targeted the Isfahan tunnel facility with 30 Tomahawk missiles and hit the Fordow enrichment plant with 12 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) — bombs designed to reach and destroy deeply buried facilities. While U.S. and Israeli battle damage estimates are ongoing, if HEU survived at either site, it may be entombed and inaccessible for months. Reportedly, Israel struck the Fordow entrances on June 22 to ensure Iran could not engage in any recovery efforts at the site.
Whether Iran moved all or some of its HEU stocks prior to the U.S. strike that targeted the Isfahan tunnels and Fordow is unclear. …
On June 13, Israel eliminated the above-ground Natanz pilot fuel enrichment plant and reportedly damaged the underground main Natanz enrichment plant, which the United States struck with two MOPs on June 21 to ensure its destruction. The Fordow enrichment site is likely too damaged to be operable after successive MOP strikes since centrifuges are delicate machinery and would be significantly damaged from bombing shock waves.
Positively, Iran likely cannot weaponize any HEU and construct nuclear devices any time soon. During its strikes, Israel damaged Tehran’s weaponization capabilities extensively, meaning Iran may not have the ability to construct nuclear devices in the immediate term, even if it sought to. Jerusalem struck numerous weaponization facilities, equipment, atomic weapons components, and documentation and assassinated at least 14 nuclear scientists.
Netanyahu also noted on June 22 that Israel has intelligence on the whereabouts of the missing HEU. Thus, Israel or the United States may conduct further strikes to eliminate the material.
And then there’s CNN:
Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.”
Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes. So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” this person added.
From press secretary 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.
CNN conveniently left out that the intelligence report was considered “low confidence.” In addition, the CNN story was written by the first reporter who broke the “Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation, says 51 intelligence officials” story.
As for Israel, it’s still evaluating the situation, but the official word from Israel is that the program was set back by years.
What’s more, with these attacks by Israel and the US a line was crossed. Iran’s leaders know that if they reconstitute the program, it will be attacked again by Israel and possibly also by the US (depending on who’s president at the time).
Given the events of the past decade, these days I view any supposed “leaked intelligence” reported by CNN as almost assuredly a phoney baloney deep state/legacy media counter op until proven otherwise. If such sources made the claim that water was wet I’d be compelled to double check.
Find the leaker. Prosecute him or her. Lock ’em up.
The LI article points out that Natasha Bernard, one of the the authors of the CNN article, does not have a good track record when it comes to credible reporting.
I am reminded of the big-name journalist—whose name I can’t remember 🙂 —who recounted her experience w jury duty. She stated that as a journalist she was concerned with telling the truth—or some such statement. The room of prospective jurors broke out in laughter.
It is fair to say that Natasha Bernard is not the best source for this story. It is also fair to say the military and security services who engineered this strike are not unimpeachable either. And I’m sorry to say that Trump has too much of a vested interest in the story to be totally believable. I want to see what the Chinese and Russian intelligences services are reporting home. Regrettably, I won’t be seeing that. In the meantime I’ll have to make do with newspaper analyses.
Seems as if CNN and others on the left are encouraging Trump to try again.
Would be in Irans’ best interest to claim everything has been permanently destroyed and explain , again, that they only wanted nuclear power to provide, cheap, safe, and efficient energy for the country.
Or, 4d chess, Trump admin is leaking these reports because they want Irans’ enemies to demand more bombing.
I suppose it depends. What doesn’t?
Expecting the mountain and other overburden to be blown into gravel and spread over four townships to mean “total” is not the issue.
The issue is what happened at the levels of the equipment. That takes some time to find out, if you don’t presume the MOP exploding in the tunnel level will most certainly do the job.
I love the assessments that statet it cannot be confirmed that the centrifuges were damaged because they are buried under tons of rock and earth. And yet, others were able to see through all of that and state unequivocally that the BDUs did not penetrate deep enough.
Then, there are the anonymous leakers from the intelligence community who may be the only people with less credibility than CNN, who dutifully reports their trash.
Of course Trump had the last word, for now, when he said that if Iran resumed its nuclear program we would bomb them again. After all, we know their address.
Cnn is a nothingburger change my mind bertrand in particular, so are The analogues at msnbc courtney kube
Speaking of burgers
https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1937951315625181669/analytics
Plenty of evidence in the sat pictures… big Boeing bombs made big badda booms!
It looks like the entrance tunnels were filled and the explosions blew out the fill. Anyone who has ever watched a sub movie should understand shock damage.
The carrier Lexington was lost at Coral Sea due to shock damage to the av gas fuel tanks. Leaking gas vapors exploded.
Even if it’s nothing worse than buried, it’s going to be really obvious if they start trying to dig it out again.
Commenter “F” is “sorry to say that Trump has too much of a vested interest in the story to be totally believable.”
Trump is so given to exaggeration and stretching truths that in general, I do not find him “totally believable”. Sad.
[Note: there is no way I’ll vote for anyone who is not clearly right-leaning. I am no never-Trumper, I’m just candid.]
Iran’s regime is acting to plug the intel holes. They’ve arrested seven hundred people and executed six so far. Expect more to come.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/inside-irans-spy-crisis-who-helped-israels-attacks-as-700-arrested/ar-AA1HpbIT?ocid=BingNewsSerp
The Mossad will have to rebuild their spy ring. In the meantime, satellite imagery will help track what they’re doing with the nuclear sites. I take Trump at his word that he won’t hesitate to hit them again.
So, my guess is that they will lay low and plan to rebuild slowly – hoping for a Democrat POTUS after 2028.
However, Israel should take this opportunity to further degrade/destroy Hamas Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Without its proxies Iran has to face Israel and the U.S. head on. If they were rational people, I don’t think they would continue with their plans to destroy Israel. They’re not rational, so this 46-year war is just on pause.
Centrifuges are sensitive things. They do not respond well to shock waves, of which there was more than one. If the bombs penetrated to that level, and debris was ejected from the blocked entrances, those machines are scrap.
I don’t believe anyone has seen them.
I wonder how many of the 700 were “spies” or just people fingered because someone didn’t like them. Mossad may have to rebuild it’s network, but I would bet that a great many survived. Could even be that Mossad leaked names of people it wants to get disappeared.
As for the trucks that supposedly had all that nuke material, don’t you think that Israel tracked it. It could still go boom.
M J R: I am not a never-Trumper either, I just want to point out that as far as public understanding of what has transpired, we have a very hard time reaching any kind of absolute conclusion because of the agendas of the various reporters. I would like greater transparency, but I admit we live in highly politicized times and that clouds transparency.
“F”, got it. You and I are very much on the same page.
I read today that the massive eight hour volcano of fire spewing out of the Fordow bomb craters was the uranium burning.
@Chases Eagles: If the uranium was indeed on fire then radioactive particles will be detectable from some distance away, if it is not detected already.
I looked up uranium fires, hadn’t ever thought of such a thing before. There was one in the UK in 1957 at the Windscale plant. Fallout spread all over Europe, as it does. Most metals will burn, not easily but once they get going they are hard to put out.
@Gordon Scott: Centrifuges are sensitive things.
Quite so. Just pulling the plug on one of those centrifuges can cause damage or even destruction. Those centrifuges must be carefully spun down first.
Presumably any power lines connecting Fordow to the Iranian grid would have been severed by the MOPs. Whatever local backup power there was for the centrifuges would have run down.
Assuming the bunkers hadn’t been collapsed by the MOPs as I believe.
I do wonder what happened to the technicians maintaining the centrifuges. I hope it was swift.
Re: Uranium fires
Uranium can burn as a powder, but in the centrifuges uranium is the gas form, UF6, which doesn’t burn.
If there were uranium fires burning into the atmosphere, the radioactivity would be detectable.
Of course I can’t find the post again, but one article I read mentioned that the IC routinely produces reports on every possible condition that might obtain from significant events, hence an assessment of “low confidence” for the one suggesting that there was not significant damage of Iran’s nuclear sites.
So, also of course, that is the one CNN gets a leak about.
I hope Rubio can find the leakers—it’s clear there are many generals not trustworthy.
I seriously consider Trump’s words, but as negotiation statements, not literal truth. If one is honest/ truthful in negotiation one will pay the maximum for whatever one buys, and sell at the minimum that one would accept.* Trump doesn’t do that, instead tries to get what he wants at the lowest price, and uses words to do that, like in flattering the bad guy he’s dealing with.
https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2025/06/25/dont-believe-the-medias-lies-heres-why-irans-nuke-program-is-almost-certainly-sayonara-n4941163
We don’t know the full extent of the damage, but we DO know that others also don’t know, so any who claim to know are likely lying.
That Iran has a face saving desire to lie about the damage, and even claim victory, is part of the uncertainty. The Times of Israel noted that a requirement from Iran to accept UN monitors is a guarantee of facility security. But we should conclude that they haven’t yet given up their desire to build nukes.
Others, maybe also Putin(?), have noted that Iran might get some nukes from elsewhere, perhaps N Korea or Pakistani or … The true willingness of Iran to use a nuke might still be demonstrated if they get one and blow up Tel Aviv.
The Trump decision to push for and immediate ceasefire remains the biggest unknown great or terrible choice, but it clearly reduced criticism of him as warmongering neocon. The CNN spin about the strike being little, instead of a huge game changer, seems like audience capture demanding some bad news about Trump the Hitler-Demon.
I believe Iran is now years away from making their own nuke.
One the spy networks, I doubt that most Jew hating Iranian spies are also innocent of any wrongdoings, and most have even bragged to a few select friends of the exploits they’ve done and gotten away with. My guess is that many reports of such actions are finding their way to the top spies looking to CYA by accusing and punishing others. Bad guys ratting on other bad guys.
*Many folk, including my wife and I, prefer fixed market prices without negotiating for a better price.
When going to TJ in Mexico, my mother did like to “Jew them down” to see how cheap a cool onyx stone chess set could be bought for my birthday.
My Jewish girlfriend in HS was quite vocal & unhappy with me using that phrase to her on some buying trip.
One reason some folk hate Jews is that they are so often excellent negotiators.
Most big buys, like a particular desired house, have a big surplus in a deal. The buyer willing to pay more than the seller will accept. That’s part of how wealth is created, but more of that zero-sum deal surplus goes to the better negotiator.
Huxley, if I remember my radiochemistry, uranium hexaflouride is pretty much the most corrosive thing ever. A leak in those tunnels means all of the stuff in them will be useless.
I predict NYC wealthy will commence to leave in droves, even if they have to take a hit with falling RE prices.