On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article about a recent bombing attack on Iran.
The article reports:
The recent massive U.S. strike near Iran’s central city of Isfahan likely sought to render Tehran’s remaining highly enriched uranium stockpile inaccessible by burying it deep underground — a strategy that would negate the need for a prolonged and risky U.S. ground operation to extract the material, according to an Israeli military analyst writing Tuesday.
Writing in Ynet on Tuesday, Israeli military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai — a veteran Yediot Ahronot correspondent and Israel Prize recipient — assessed that the strike reflects a deliberate U.S. effort to neutralize Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile by entombing it beneath rock, soil, and collapsed tunnel infrastructure rather than attempting to remove it by force.
The article notes:
Ben-Yishai said recent discussions had centered on two possible ways of addressing the stockpile: a ground operation to extract it from Iran or a negotiated arrangement under which Tehran would transfer it abroad.
He suggested the first option would be extraordinarily difficult.
A ground operation, he wrote, would likely require more than 1,000 troops, the establishment of airstrips at sites such as Natanz and Isfahan to sustain the force, and heavy engineering equipment capable of opening sealed tunnels — all while exposing U.S. personnel to casualties and requiring a sustained American military presence inside Iran.
The alternative, he argued, is to neutralize the uranium by burying it so thoroughly that Iran would need at least a year to locate and recover it, buying the United States and Israel time to detect and disrupt any such effort.
In Ben-Yishai’s telling, that appears to be the course Washington chose.
“It can be assessed with reasonable confidence,” he wrote, that the United States opted to bury the material rather than attempt a ground extraction or rely on Iranian cooperation. He said U.S. forces struck the area surrounding the uranium storage site at Natanz in March and likely carried out a similar operation overnight in Isfahan.
The article concludes:
Most importantly, Ben-Yishai wrote, U.S. operational activity points to a decision to bury the enriched material rather than undertake the kind of prolonged ground mission that would have required a sustained American military presence on Iranian soil.
That, he suggested, may be precisely why Trump chose to publicize the footage.
Trump has also suggested the broader campaign may be nearing its conclusion, saying Tuesday the United States is “ahead of schedule” and has largely eliminated Iran’s military capabilities, adding in separate remarks that “we won’t have to be there much longer” as U.S. forces continue targeting what remains of Tehran’s offensive infrastructure.
I don’t want to see American ground troops in Iran. Hopefully we can destroy enough of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and police force to allow the Iranians to take back their country. I have no idea who the next leader of Iran should be, but it needs to be someone who promotes freedom for everyone.