I agree with the gp.

Iran is a huge country and USA and Israel has been pointing their finger on this exakt spot for weeks.

Either they dug further down or they just transported things away.

Leaving it all there just seems like a really weird thing to do.

> Care to elaborate? A random person doubting things doesn't help other people or bringing a discussion forward.

I don't know if you noticed, but what you are arguing for is in fact for mindlessly accepting unverified claims and extrapolate them to an optimal outcome. This is the opposite of critical thinking, and goes well beyond wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, if you pay attention to OP's point, you'll understand that Iran's nuclear sites have been continuously designed and developed for decades, while subjected to an almost evolutionary pressure, to continue operations even after withstanding direct attacks in scenarios matching exactly Trump's attacks.

In the very least, you must assess the effect of those strikes before making any sort of claim.

Another factor which it seems you somehow missed was the fact that Russia, another nuclear-capable totalitarian regime, is nowadays heavily dependent on Iran to conduct it's imperialist agenda. If Russia was negotiating handing over nuclear capabilities to North Korea in exchange for supporting it's war effort, do you believe Russia now has no interest to speed up Iran's nuclear weapons programmes?

To be frank, it wouldn't be a surprise for Trump to claim "total obliteration" while having achieved nothing substantial.

This would also be a very convenient way to break the current impasse: Trump can claim victory and brag about US weapons, Iranians can continue their program virtually unscathed, perhaps after bombing some minor evacuated US base for show.

After the dust settles, Iran can withdraw fron NNPT and the next day have Pakistan ship them a bomb. Peace (via MAD) achieved! Maybe we should even give Donald his Nobel prize for that.

This would be a really risky strategy as it will push the Iranians into a corner with potentially large impacts on the oil price (which will change US public opinion).

As Sun Tzu famously said: "You really should back your enemy in a corner and ask them for negotiations. Having someone's feet on hot coals really speeds it up. And if they break it, it's a case for using nukes against them. "

Such advanced people, the Chinese are.

"Don't worry, we can just engage in a bombing campaign against a foreign nation indefinitely."

Fordow is widely reported to be significantly deeper than GBU-57 can penetrate (which is just 60 meters). The only way they penetrate is landing two of them in the exact same hole (think Robin Hood splitting an arrow with another arrow). Off by just a little and it winds up with it's own separate 60m hole.

CEP with GPS for our most accurate glide bombs is 5 meters. But GPS jamming is cheap and easy and the best precision we get in that case is 30 meters CEP.

GPU-57 gets its power from gravity. Reaching that 60 meter maximum penetration requires dropping the bomb from maximum elevation, but without GPS, that further increases the CEP.

With just 6 bombs, it seems unlikely that they could reliably penetrate. Actual penetration would likely require nuclear penetrators, but those also break the nuclear prohibition and open Pandora's box in places like Ukraine.

A great example of the problem is Yemen. We tried to get the Houthi to stop by dropping bunker busters on their tunnel systems and completely failed. We were forced to reach a ceasefire agreement (one that likely went up in smoke last night).

The layout of Fordow from what we’ve seen is not a single site. Depending on how many runs they did maybe it is all but destroyed or maybe it’s 1/3 destroyed. I’m sure Israel’s intelligence on it is pretty accurate (probably not public at this point)

aiding regime change would be much easier, and would solve all these problems better. At some point in the next few days, the regime will be so weakened that the Iranian people will overthrow it themselves

I’d be somewhat skeptical of how much can be achieved just by bombing. It didn’t do much to stop the Nazi war machine in WWII. We have better munitions now, but we also have a lot fewer of them, and the US public won’t tolerate 121,000 dead airmen, either.