We dropped a dozen highly specialized bombs in a single, closed-end operation, and you're arguing that this meaningfully depleted the USAF magazine enough to move the needle on a conflict in Taiwan?

I'd be arguing first that the operation failed, and has made no meaningful impact on the mountain and esp. the nuclear facilities over 100m under granite.

Generous estimates place relevant bomb capacity in the US at 100, though I believe only ~1/3 of that is confirmed. Reports say ~10 were used. So, speculatively, the US has used 25% of its capacity to bust deep fortifications -- and, imv, failed to make a dent.

Credible estimates I'm aware of talk about dozens of bombs (per similar deep fortification), seriously depleting US capacity. It's unlikely the US would be willing to use up more than 50% of its bombing capacity here -- since a very large number of bombs are required for deep fortifications of this kind.

ie., US capacity is about "destroying two mountains", and it really needs at least to retain capacity to destroy one.

A well-designed nuke could take out the mountain, that's really the best air-supplied shot at taking the thing out.

Either way, none of this can be confirmed without ground forces. So one wonders if at least some of this theatre is to provoke iran enough to react in a way that justifies a ground invasion.

To your point, yes, china would absolutely love the US to degrade as much capacity as it possibly can. One images, even, they'd spin up a nuclear programme in iran very quickly again, just to try to drag the US back in. The US has done much worse.

China's geostrategic goal at the moment is stamp on the rope-pins around the US elephant: ukraine, iran, israel, and so on. Have the US blow as much as possible of its rapidly depleting military arsenal everywhere but around china.

Trump was the first president to really take this problem seriously, it's a little unfortunate that he's found himself in the same trap as every US president for the last 25 years.