Was it real?

As we record this on the morning of the 23 June, we are a little over 24 hours removed from Operation Midnight Hammer, in which USAF assets, including B2 Spirit stealth heavy bombers, attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. 

US President Donald Trump says that Iran's nuclear programme has been destroyed for good. Open Source satellite pictures of the Fordow site show six ominous black holes in two, tightly clustered groups of three, into which deep-penetration bunker buster bombs were dropped. The entire strike package got in and out entirely unmolested.

But was Iran's nuclear programme really destroyed? There are suggestions that Iran moved its highly enriched uranium from the Fordow site some days before the US attack. If it was such a devastating blow, why has Iran not responded? US Bases and Gulf energy infrastructure is far closer, and far easier to strike than Israel, which Iran is still pounding.

And was Iran a paper tiger? So beset by corruption and ill discipline that Israel could establish air supremacy in a single night, and US air assets can roam the skies with impunity? So that it could have its entire nuclear programme destroyed in a week? That it would be too afraid to strike back, lest the US escalate further. 

What was real at all? And what's next… 

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