Now that the 🇺🇸US has bombed 3 of 🇮🇷Iran's nuclear sites, where will the war go from here?
It depends on 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵
🇮🇷Iran never wanted the war, and its forces are being decimated. Its ability to send missiles to 🇮🇱Israel is being degraded every day. If it could sign a ceasefire while saving face, it would
Meanwhile, 🇮🇱Israel has kept striking Iran non stop. Its daily airstrikes didn't go down substantially in the first few days. Its ability to keep striking 🇮🇷Iran remains unabated
So when will it stop?
🇮🇱Israel's PM Netanyahu laid it clearly: The goal was to remove the existential threats of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. More details from the IDF Chief of Staff below.
So Israel must destroy these programs
But more importantly, it will make sure they never come back
🇮🇱Israel can destroy the ballistic missiles program, but it couldn't destroy the nuclear program.
That's why the 🇺🇸US intervened just for that, and dropped many superheavy bunker-busting bombs on 3 nuclear sites in 🇮🇷Iran
This is the result of the bombing of the Isfahan facility:
Bombing the facilities is not enough if 🇮🇷Iran can rebuild them. That's why 🇮🇱Israel has killed at least 14 nuclear scientists.
So is it close to being done? No
🇮🇱Israel doesn't know where 🇮🇷Iran's 400kg of 60%-enriched uranium are. The IAEA can't find any radioactivity in the bombed sites, so uranium was probably not there. Where then?
AFAIK, other nuclear sites haven't been bombed, like Mt Kolang Gaz La (more deeply buried)
This is why prediction markets don't think Israel will stop its operations against Iran before the end of the month
The problem is that, even if Israel succeeds destroying everything, it's still possible for Iran to build a bomb. It would take years, but now Iran would have a massive incentive to do it, and it would do so secretively
That's why Israel will want to end Khamenei
But it's not just Khamenei who is anti-Israel. The entire regime is. So Israel will try to topple it
So we can expect many more days of bombings, where 🇮🇱Israel will:
• Finish the job with the ballistic and nuclear programs
• Try to kill Khamenei
• Try to topple the 🇮🇷Iranian government
1. From Feb 2025 to Jun 2025, it increased its amount of enriched uranium by 50% 2. It now had 400kg of highly enriched uranium, enough for 9-10 bombs 3. This is 60% enriched uranium. Fuel only requires 5% enrichment.
4... 🧵
4. It's easy to go from 60% to 90% (weapons grade), it only takes weeks 5. The only country on Earth with such enriched uranium and without a bomb is 🇮🇷Iran 6. The IAEA (nuclear watchdog) found 3 secret nuclear sites
7. When 🇮🇷Iran didn't respond to this accusation, the IAEA censured it 8. 🇮🇷Iran responded to the censoring by saying it would open a 3rd enrichment site in a secret spot
Can there be an invasion of Iran? Hardly. Two maps explain why, and also why Iran is the way it is today, whether its regime will fall, what other superpowers will do, and in general why Iran is the way it is today
The only truly exposed area is the southwestern corner of Khuzestan, which is a swamp
The biggest superpowers lie to the west, and there the very broad Zagros make it really hard to conquer Iran. The mountain range is tall and wide, making logistics similar to Afghanistan. Very hard.
Iraq learned it the hard way when it tried to attack there in 1980
Listening to the debate, it looks like 🇮🇱Israel & the 🇺🇸US intelligence community disagreed, but that's not really the case!
Both thought Iran was weeks to months away from being able to develop the bomb
So what's the disagreement?
Here are more facts:
• Tehran had just announced a 3rd enrichment site in an undisclosed place
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had recently produced a report censoring Iran for the 1st time in 20y
• It accused Iran of 3 undisclosed nuclear sites
• It claimed Iran had enough enriched uranium for 9-10 nuclear bombs
• All the other countries in the world who have enriched uranium at the same level also have nuclear weapons. Iran is the only country that doesn't have these weapons yet enriches uranium as much
Nuclear is the best source of energy across nearly all the factors that matter. It's the safest, cleanest, densest, most sustainable, geopolitically stable, predictable, dispatchable, and can be cheap.
1. SAFEST
It kills 1000x less than coal
Living close to a nuclear power plant for one year gives you less radiation than eating a banana (graph is logarithmic)
2. CLEANEST
Accounting for all the lifecycle of all energies, it's the one that emits the least CO2