Iran roundup
A roundup seems like the only way to deal with the recent Iran news after a day off. Of course, it’s sometimes hard to tell if a story is true or not, and which “experts” to follow. But hey, I have to try, right? So here goes:
(1) Who’s in charge in Iran? We don’t know, but here’s an article on what some “analysts” say:
IRGC Commander Maj. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi and members of his inner circle have allegedly taken charge of the Islamic republic, as evident by Iran’s attacks on ships trying to sail through the Strait of Hormuz and Tehran’s refusal to join peace talks with the US this week, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said.
The sudden shift to a hardline stance also shows that more moderate members of Iran’s leadership, including Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi, have been sidelined.
Haven’t most of us assumed right along that the IRGC has been in charge, although splintered, and that there are rival groups participating in the negotiations, plus that there probably are various other groups vying for control? It doesn’t take specialists to figure that out.
And I’m no expert, but I’ve never believed the IRGC will negotiate, and certainly not in good faith.
(2) Our ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, has this to say:
“I promise you, I assure you the United States doesn’t trust anything; any agreement that comes out will have to be verifiable and enforceable.” As U.S. ambassador to the UN, Waltz noted, “the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and its nuclear inspectors…will be a key part” of any final resolution with Iran.
He said Pres.Trump has more tools available for the military to employ in the Strait to continue the blockade, and any ceasefire extension is up to the president …
On Sunday, the host asked Waltz what the U.S. and the president are prepared to do, if Iran does not sign on to an agreement. In this longer clip, he did not mince words, saying “all options are on the table” …
(3) And this may end up being of vital importance:
Late last week, Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent announced another turning of the screws by the U.S. in addition to the blockade and devastating bombings — economic pressure via what the administration is calling “Operation Economic Fury.” Freezing assets, including bank accounts, of top Iranian regime and IRGC figures, with the help of Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf states.
(4) The US Navy has seized an Iranian ship:
Today, an Iranian-flagged cargo ship named TOUSKA, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried to get past our Naval Blockade, and it did not go well for them. The U.S. Navy Guided Missile Destroyer USS SPRUANCE intercepted the TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman, and gave them fair warning to stop. The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom. Right now, U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel. The TOUSKA is under U.S. Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship, and are seeing what’s on board! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
From CENTCOM:
Guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance (DDG 111) intercepted M/V Touska as it transited the north Arabian Sea at 17 knots enroute to Bandar Abbas, Iran. American forces issued multiple warnings and informed the Iranian-flagged vessel it was in violation of the U.S. blockade.
After Touska’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings over a six-hour period, Spruance directed the vessel to evacuate its engine room. Spruance disabled Touska’s propulsion by firing several rounds from the destroyer’s 5-inch MK 45 Gun into Touska’s engine room. U.S. Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit later boarded the non-compliant vessel, which remains in U.S. custody.
(5) Commenter “CICERO” raises this issue:
Trump wants Iran (whoever, matters not) to surrender to the US all of Iran’s enriched uranium. Trouble is, Mr President, it is stored in underground sites which have bomb-blocked enrances per your command, so Iran cannot cough the uranium up on demand.
But if Iran can’t do it, they can allow us to do the honors. See these remarks:
[Dr. Matthew Bunn:] This is the Isfahan nuclear facility deep in Iran’s desert. Under this mountain, international inspectors say most of Iran’s HEU is stored in scuba tank sized containers. It’s believed those containers are in tunnels so far below ground, America’s bunker busting bombs may not be able to reach them.
Satellite images show in the weeks leading up to this current war, the Iranians blocked the tunnel entrances with dirt. Two weeks ago, images showed roadblocks. Nuclear analysts say it suggests Tehran is concerned about a U.S. or Israeli raid on the facility. …
… U.S. Special Forces have been training for deep underground facilities of one kind or another for a long, long, long time. …
Nuclear analysts have become increasingly concerned about another site in Iran, known as Pickaxe Mountain. Satellite images from February show an entrance to what’s believed to be a massive nuclear facility deep under solid rock. …
[Scott Roecker:] If there was a deal between the United States and Iran for the United States to take possession of that material it would be the National Nuclear Security Administration that would lead that effort. …
Roecker used lessons learned from Project Sapphire to remove nuclear material from countries around the world and ship it to the U.S. for safekeeping. So far the NNSA has removed more than 16,000 pounds of HEU.
There was agreement in place with the countries. And so that’s a really key fact here. You wanna have a willing partner who’s working with you hand in hand.
The article spends a lot of time talking about how difficult it would be to accomplish this without Iran’s cooperation – not necessarily impossible, but unprecedented. Of course, that’s why Trump wants a deal.
Just curious. What was the last time a naval gun of any size was fired in a ship to ship action? WWII? I don’t mean against a zodiac or patrol boat. Guess it’s good to keep them around.
(5) not as easy as explained. If the tunnels leading to the galleries where the enriched materials are stored have been destroyed by the massive bombs. It will be difficult to excavate through the highly fractured rock. Imagine excavating though a mountain of large broken marbles. Heavy support measures are necessary to excavate in order not to have the mountain fall in on you. Maybe 20 m per day advance if all goes well. What would be the condition of the canisters? Better to leave safely in place and monitor any works by rogue elements at the tunnel portals. This recovery work by the Iranians cannot be done unobserved.
Lurch: good question. Last big-gun ship-to-ship battle? Battle of the Surigao Strait in October 1944 between USN and Imperial Japanese Navy battleships and heavy cruisers.
Post-WWII:
1956 Suez Crisis: The Egyptian frigate Domiat (formerly HMS Nith) was sunk by gunfire from the British cruiser HMS Newfoundland and destroyer HMS Diana.
1961 Battle of Mormugão Harbour: During the Indian annexation of Goa, the Portuguese frigate NRP Afonso de Albuquerque exchanged fire with Indian frigates INS Betwa and INS Beas. The much older Portuguese frigate ran aground and was captured by Indian forces. (H/T Google AI)
In the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, USN destroyers fired on North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Doesn’t really qualify as a ship-to-ship engagement.
P.S. My first guess was India-Pakistan War of 1971, but that was all surface-to-surface missiles and torpedoes.
” U.S. Special Forces have been training for deep underground facilities of one kind or another for a long, long, long time. …”
So it is said, but I do not take this as fact. My take on a “long, long, long time” is not a few years but rather decades. Not credible.
Dr. C. B. Wobbly decrees things military are not credible because oncology is just like special operations.
Related (Khaled Abu Toameh):
“For the Leadership in Iran, Gaza and Beirut, What Is the Only Important Outcome?”—
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22453/iran-hamas-hezbollah-power
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no, it has zip to do with oncology, and you surely know that. Let us avoid personal sniping.
It’s believed those containers are in tunnels so far below ground, America’s bunker busting bombs may not be able to reach them.
Hmmm. So “nuclear dust” is more Trump hyperbole? Not surprised.
@CICERO
Personal sniping aside, the US has had doctrine and training for dealing with underground ops for decades, arguably a bit more. From what I can tell this really kicked into high gear in Vietnam where we played a nasty and highly lethal game of cat and mouse with the communists, particularly the NVA’s sappers and the Viet Cong in things like the rat warren like complex of the Iron Triangle and others (such as counter mining to prevent the reds from
Undermining bases like Khe Shan). Truly dismal hard work that we did decent at but for many of the longest running battles had no decisive outcome. But we haven’t had reason to stop. In particular studying our tunnel clearing ops in Afghanistan and Iraq or trying to stop cross border movement with Mexico might help.
https://www.trango-sys.com/modern-tactics-and-approaches-in-underground-warfare/
In any case the US military and even LEOs have been training and prepping to fight underground and conduct heavy excavation for quite some time, and we’ve had a pretty good track record for it even if we might not be on par with say the Israelis or South Koreans for it. How effective we’d be or prepared for it is another question, but given what is open source I see no reason to doubt we’ve done a lot of it in recent history and have at least made significant shows at training to prep our people for it.
In any case with Iran and its enriched uranium the real issue is not whether the Mullahcracy can or will directly hand over the potentially buried enriched uranium to us, but whether they will allow us and teams of inspectors to do it ourselves and verify they have nothing else stored away. I couldn’t even rule out we would pay for the privilege, like Trump supposedly offered earlier with civilian use grade uranium. So I don’t view that hangup as particularly relevant or important to matters as they stand.
I think this is a one movie two screens situation. Trump offers a negotiated settlement to spare Iran destruction, the IRGC reads it as weakness and thinks Iran is winning. So it goes. I expect the war to restart with a massive attack Wednesday night or Thursday, it is hard to pin down exactly when the ceasefire ends. Meanwhile, ships are turning off AIS and slipping out of the gulf. Iran’s control of the strait is already weak, soon it will be nonexistent.
This is a government that has women raped before execution so that they won’t automatically go to Paradise.
They think that God will bungle where He sends souls without their intervention, so they intervene. They are certainly not going to negotiate with mere mortals.
What is it about physicians that seem so sure about their personal opinions that are unrelated to their training?
Cicero:
Indeed I do know that oncology has no bearing of foreign policy or military operations. What is your excuse? The WSJ told you so?
When Iran begins to cheat, as they will, what then?
Remember the IRGC has no place to go.
@Richard Aubrey:When Iran begins to cheat, as they will, what then?
Getting the enriched uranium out would make that much, much more difficult. They’d have to start over from zero, or get enriched uranium from someone who has it to give away and has the means to get it to them. They started on enrichment back in 1987, though I don’t think starting from zero would entail another 40 years of work. As for who has it to give away and who could get it to them, I think that’s a short list, and the names on it no surprise…
I don’t know how it’s known how much enriched uranium they have, but assuming for the sake of argument that it IS known, then knowing that they didn’t cheat is as almost as simple as weighing it. Uranium’s density is similar to gold’s. Not sure what they’d fake uranium with that wouldn’t be easily detected as a fake.
@orn Hardly unique to physicians. Or new. An inordinate value put on your own opinions outside your field of expertise was outlined in Plato’s *Apology of Socrates*.
“This is a government that has women raped before execution so that they won’t automatically go to Paradise.” Mary Catelli
Not a government but a ‘religious’ death cult. And given that in Allah’s ‘paradise’, perpetual devirginizing in a haram awaits decent Muslim girls and women… with presumably haram ‘sharing’ between the jihadist ‘warriors’… I suspect many ‘good’ Muslim women of every age await Allah’s paradise with some trepidation. To borrow a bit of British and Irish English vernacular, by every measure Allah is “a right bastard”…
Tommy-Jay. “ It’s believed those containers are in tunnels so far below ground, America’s bunker busting bombs may not be able to reach them.” This could also mean that the enrichment galleries are located far from the tunnel entrance portals and not necessarily far below the surface. I read somewhere that the bunker buster bombs travelled down the fresh air vents to the enrichment galleries where they exploded, if true, Trump may be correct about the dust; everything – generators, centrifuges, canisters blown to smithereens. Nothing but radioactive “dust” remaining. In my opinion, better to leave where it is – safe and secure, it will unlikely be recovered in our lifetimes due to the difficulties to reach the enrichment galleries.
And how to handle the radioactive rock that must be disposed.
This is not an underground operation for the US military, nor any military – except to secure the location. It is an engineering problem best handled by an experienced tunneling contractor.
Updates from this morning:
#1 seems to be confirmed as the IRGC take control
https://www.foxnews.com/world/irans-revolutionary-guard-sidelines-president-military-grip-expands
Ceasefire violations along with Iran not meeting with Vance et al seems to set up the next phase tonight. If true again, confirms the IRGC is full control.
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15751737/Trump-accuses-Iran-VIOLATING-ceasefire-regime-refuses-meet-Vance-hours-war-restarts.html
Interesting article on regime collapse and the how the pieces come together. Relevant quote: “This is the deepest lesson of classic game theory for understanding regime survival. Collapse is often not linear. It is not a smooth function of worsening economic indicators. It is a sudden strategic realignment triggered when enough players no longer believe the old equilibrium will hold.”
In physics we call this a step function.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/iran_s_regime_survival_a_classic_game_theory_perspective.html
Let me revise my earlier post a bit. I think the IRGC defines “winning” as “not dead yet”. If Iran were to collapse into an ash heap, and one IRGC member survived, that would be winning 🙂
It’s perhaps a commonplace today to think Iranian ordinary people who dislike their oppressors would likely be glad to aid the Mossad, say, or some other intelligence gathering enemies of the IRI to locate and eliminate the current “leadership” of the IRGC etc., as for example Ghalibaf or Vahidi. Thing is, what with stories claiming deep rifts within the IRI “leadership”, it may be we ought consider the extent to which the very “insiders” of the IRI government apparatus are talking with US and Israeli operatives concerning the whereabouts of their more powerful rivals in that structure, aiming to get a leg up with the elimination of same. Pleasant thing to muse on, anyhow.
IIRG – Persian for “dead men walking?” Not soon enough. All of them.