In order to take out the Iranian Fordo nuclear site a GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb will be required. This ordinance can only be carried in a B-2 or B52 bomber. Israel does not possess aircraft that can carry the GBU-57 -- thus it is likely the U.S. will need to take out the Fordo site to eliminate Iran's nuclear capability.
Macron says Trump is offering some last minute ceasefire proposal. I suspect Israel is too far along in their operations and goals to be sidetracked by that. Bibi tries to please Trump but as we have seen in Gaza he does what he has to do.
I don't rule out the possibility that Israel will just pound Iran for a week or two to take out all defenses and then attempt a ground operation at a couple of the critical nuke sites. It would be ballsy but Bibi knows his brother- of Entebbe fame- would have done it. Probably Iran will agree to some lame sorry arse ceasefire talk. /they know that every time they agree to concessions with the west it is just more free time to develop the bomb. that approach has worked great for them. Trump will go for it. I think Bibi is too far gone now though. He sees their gig and he saw that intelligence.
It will all come down to how Trump perceives history's evaluation of him years down the road regarding this that will control what he does. You can bet he's taking it all in right now.
Yeh, but Trump loves the short term buzz he gets from announcing a big beautiful deal that no one in history has ever gotten blah, blah, blah even if the frigging deal is shit. So he needs to guard against that a bit. Putin plays him every day by exploiting that weakness. Hopefully Trump will in fact think about his legacy instead.
No matter what happens, one thing is 1000% sure.... if things turn out bad, it will all land in Trump's lap, not Bibi's. And if things turn out right, Iran/Israel will soon disappear from the news cycles...and a new Trump scandal will emerge. Odds are he'll just do it though. Where the rubber meets the road, the entire world wants to see the "bunker busters" in action. No one likes this regime.
Hehehehehe, you won't see American or Israeli news media write this.... Trump’s Russian delusion is complete. He sees Putin as a peacemaker Peter Hartcher Political and international editor June 17, 2025 https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-...es-putin-as-a-peacemaker-20250616-p5m7pc.html We know that Donald Trump has long had a soft spot for Vladimir Putin. But now it’s almost as if he’s given him a spot in his administration. The US president has said that Russia’s Putin on the weekend had phoned to offer himself as a new peace mediator in the war between Israel and Iran: “We had a long talk about it,” Trump told the American news network ABC. “I would be open to it. He [Putin] is ready.” Illustration by Dionne GainCredit: Trump himself has proved unable to negotiate an end to any of the conflicts he’d promised to resolve. So perhaps it’s a good idea to let Putin try? French President Emmanuel Macron doesn’t think so. “I do not think that Russia, which is today engaged in a high-intensity conflict and has decided not to respect the United Nations charter for several years now, could be in any way a mediator,” he said. Fair point. And Putin has a favourite in the fight. Moscow is the most important foreign sponsor of Iran’s ayatollah regime. Appointing Putin mediator would be like allowing a football team’s coach to referee his own team’s match. Russia has supplied Iran with air defence systems and weapons for many years. Iran has returned the favour by giving Russia thousands of drones for its war against Ukraine and even built a drone factory in Russia for Putin. “Putin has a keen interest in perpetuating the Iranian regime,” points out Peter Tesch, former Australian ambassador to Moscow. So, by attacking Iran now, “Israel is posing a serious challenge to Russia’s strategic interest in the country with which Russia recently signed a 20-year strategic agreement”. But these aren’t the only reasons that Trump’s anointing of Putin as potential Middle East mediator is quite extraordinary. It’s breathtaking that an American president would outsource peace negotiations to Russia, a traditional enemy of the US. Tesch says that it’s unsurprising that Trump would be prepared to gratify Putin. And yet he says it’s unprecedented: “I’m not aware of any American president essentially sub-contracting a major engagement like this to another country, particularly in an area of such vital strategic significance to the US.” How could Trump possibly trust an American rival to settle a war on terms favourable to the US? He can’t. Putin, as always, would only favour himself. Trump hasn’t made even a single decision in his foreign policy that would harm any Russian interest. Israel has fought Iran before and will again. It’s important, but not new. But the US delegating peace negotiations to its traditional enemy when vital US interests are at stake? That’s new. Tesch, who also served as chief of strategy in the Australian Defence Department, says that it’s more evidence of “this bizarre, gushing admiration that Trump manifests for Putin that’s a constant in US foreign policy under this administration”. He says that Trump hasn’t made even a single decision in his foreign policy that would harm any Russian interest. On the contrary, Trump has granted Russia special favour. When the US in April applied tariffs on 180 nations, including all its traditional allies plus penguin colonies, Russia got a special exemption. Trump gave his “genius” Russian buddy another important gift in the past few months. The incoming administration immediately dismantled US efforts to protect against foreign meddling in US elections. FBI officers and Homeland Security staff working against foreign interference were reassigned or forced out, the New York Times reported. “In last year’s election, the teams tracked and publicised numerous influence operations from Russia, China and Iran to blunt their impact on unsuspecting voters”. In Trump’s America, these foreign enemies are to have free rein. Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, wrote to Trump that it was akin to shutting down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ahead of hurricane season. But what about Trump’s pressure on Putin to end his war with Ukraine? It’s only play-acting. When the US leader proposed a 30-day ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky agreed immediately. Putin refused. Trump huffed and puffed and threatened to put secondary sanctions on Russian oil exports as a way of coercing Putin into a ceasefire. But the threat was empty. There were no US sanctions on Putin, and therefore no ceasefire. The EU is applying its 18th brace of sanctions on Russian oil, the financial lifeblood of Putin’s war machine. Plucky European states, including Denmark and Sweden, are seizing and impounding the ships of Russia’s “shadow fleet” carrying illicit Russian cargoes. But mighty America stands by, doing nothing to impede Putin. In fact, Putin has only escalated the war. “Today,” Zelensky said on Monday, “the Russians launched a stone-cold, combined attack on our energy infrastructure. This is a spit in the face of everything the international community is trying to do to stop this war.” Tellingly: “It happened right after Putin’s conversation with Trump,” said the Ukrainian leader. “After the Americans asked us not to strike Russian energy facilities”. Implication: Trump applies a double standard, restraining us from hitting Russia, yet licensing Russia to hit us with impunity. Zelensky continued: “At the same time as Putin tries to portray himself as a mediator for the Middle East and attempts to somehow assist his accomplices in Tehran. The level of cynicism is staggering.” Indeed, Trump tells us that he and Putin spoke for about an hour on the weekend, mostly about Israel and Iran: “Much less time was spent talking about Russia/Ukraine, but that will be for next week.” The Russian leader, apparently, gets to choose topics and priorities, which wars are to be ended and which will continue. This week Putin hosts Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto. The US president has gutted the expert advisers in the White House National Security Council, and sacked his first national security adviser, Mike Walz. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, is in the post in an acting capacity. The evidence of Putin’s uncanny and growing influence over Trump suggests that perhaps he is the de facto US national security adviser to the president. From Russia, with love.