Public opinion is largely negative and skeptical regarding the US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Many commenters express distrust in government narratives, fear of escalating conflict, and frustration towards repeated military interventions. There is a strong desire for peaceful resolutions rather than military actions, with many highlighting the potential futility of these strikes and regretting the current political climate.

United States Government

Iran

Trump Administration

The assessment, part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to determine the status of Iran’s nuclear program since the facilities were struck, was briefed to some U.S. lawmakers, Defense Department officials and allied countries in recent days, four of those people said.

NBC News has also learned that U.S. Central Command had developed a much more comprehensive plan to strike Iran that would have involved hitting three additional sites in an operation that would have stretched for several weeks instead of a single night, according to a current U.S. official and two former U.S. officials.

President Donald Trump was briefed on that plan, but it was rejected because it was at odds with his foreign policy instincts to extract the United States from conflicts abroad, not dig deeper into them, as well as the possibility of a high number of casualties on both sides, one of the current officials and one of the former officials said.

nbcnews

Neutral observer here. It's clear to me the strikes ordered by Trump on Iran are the modern-day equivalent of "Gun Boat Diplomacy" where large firepower is used as a diplomatic tool, not to destroy ur opponent, but rather to force them to give some strategic concessions. 

To me, the bombing appeared to be more of a tactical ploy to get them back to the negotiating table to stop their enrichment program, versus a strategic move to annihilate their nuclear capabilities. The above article proves just that. Trump rejected a military plan to destroy all facilities, which would have taken weeks, but instead chose to do a limited-scale strike, albeit in a Trumpian way, to force Iran into 2 things:

\- Demonstrate to Iranians the awesome power of the US military and diplomatic tools. US planes bombed them deep inside their country without even being noticed. 

\- Force Iran to abandon its enrichment plans, and bring them back to the negotiating table to denuclearize. 

Here, the catch is that it assumes no other outside power(Russia/China) will come to Iran's aid. So far, it seems to hold true.

neropro345

This seems to me like egregiously bad reporting:

Keep in mind there are a ton of agencies that are assessing this and there will be a lot of individual reports - the point is to find the consensus.

The reporters here don’t ask themselves:

-Why do our sources only want to tell us about one single assessment, not what the whole body of reports say?

-why don’t they tell us what agency came up with this assessment?  Is it an agency with more or less access to information?

-Why don’t they tell us whether it was a low or high confidence report?

There are probably AT LEAST 30 different assessments, but they only cover the 2 so far that suggest not all the facilities were destroyed.  Reading between the lines makes it obvious that most of the assessments are probably saying the opposite.  But that isn’t the impression they are trying to push.

NBC reporters are smart enough to know when they’re being used to push a narrative and this kind of thing is so damaging to people’s trust in media (which is extremely important, because trusting random accounts on Twitter is even less reliable.

Bullboah

We're still on that?  

Iran built those facilities to begin with and could rebuild them even if they were completely vaporized or turned into fine dust.  
Iranian air defenses are gone, their skies are wide open, there's nothing stopping Israel from bombing any sign of meaningful recovery if need be.   

For the purpose of negotiations it just dosen't matter to what extent the nuclear program was set back exactly - all that matters is that Iran isn't standing a step short of the finish line.

OwlMan_001

What are they even saying ?   
The use attacked 3 sites, Fordo, Isfahan, and Natanz.  
Fordo got hit with 12 of the Mops, Natanz had another 2, and Isfahan got bombed by Tomohawks.   
But the Natanz and Isfahan facilities were also bombed a LOT by the Israeli airforce as well, unlike Fordo.

So what is the article actually trying to say ?

DanceFluffy7923

Everything Trump says is a lie and Everything he does is a failure . 


   the Republicans will forever have the stain of trump on them.

RobotAlbertross

The bigger picture is that he broke a decades long taboo of actually bombing Iran. We've talked about that for decades and now we did it... And can easily do it again

chi-Ill_Act_3575

And this is why I don't know what to believe anymore

TehSmitty04

Doesn’t matter, he already got the headline a month ago

hammilithome

nsjersey

I really REALLY want you to fire the idiots who write your headlines /u/nbcnews - you appear to deliberately set out to lie to your audience.

Gusfoo

Everyday I read a different story: All sites were destroyed, uranium was moved, uranium wasn’t moved, sites were only damaged, now only one site destroyed. 

What a shit show.

MidLifeCrysis75

Sadly, I don’t trust reports that come from the current administration. First they claimed they destroyed their entire nuclear program. Then it was reported that none of them were actually destroyed and only one was damaged. Now they claim one was destroyed…

Their word is worthless.

JohnnyGFX

That face when you don't trust any source but know they all have an agenda while profiting on emotional fears through ad revenue. 

It's the ruling class versus us, y'all.

gentleman_bronco

DaisyMa1

He might not even remember the whole "bombing of Iran" thing if someone asked him about it. He's got other problems.

Orwells_Roses

One of the things that has me scratching my head is the indignant response from the administration about how effective a 30,000lb bomb is. 

Most of the weight of the GBU-58 is in the bomb casing; it must be strong enough to penetrate the earth/concrete. That is the penetrating side of the equation, to that we must add the explosive filler. As it turns out, the filling weight is 752lbs of AFX-757/PBXN-114. 

By way of reference, the Mark 84 is filled with 946lbs of Tritonal, H6 or PBXN-109. 

A quick google search tells us a few things. The TNT equivalents of these explosives are as follows: AFX-767: 1.84 PBXN-114: unknown, probably about the same as -109.  Tritonal: 1.639 H6: 0.854 PBXN-109: 1.42

So that gives us something to work with. Each GBU-57 warehead is roughly equivalent to 1,383lbs of TNT. The Mark 84 comes in at 808lbs (for H6), 1,343lbs (PBXN-109) and 1,550lbs equivalent pounds of TNT. 

We can then surmise that each bunker was hit with the roughly the equivalent of a 2,000 bomb inside. Pretty significant amount of force. Depending on how the facilities were built the damage would have been contained to within relatively discrete areas. 

For example, if the bunkers were essentially an open hall with flimsy wall structures then a couple bombs would be fucking devastating. 

On the other hand, if the facilities were properly compartmentalized then the damage would be relatively contained. Think of an spoked wheel, or a long hallway with branches. Construct blast doors, ventilation and so on and you can have an extremely resilient structure. Additionally, with bunkers of this type, it is normative for machines, production floors, etc. to be suspended so as to reduce shock damage. Finally, the Iranians knew it was coming. Even if it was not communicated ahead of the strike (there are suggestions Trump used back channels to do just that), the prudent thing for the facility commanders would have been to seal blast doors and prepare for attack. 

Unless and until we get eyeballs in the facilities there is no way to be certain how effective the strikes were. These were the Crown Jewels of the IRGC &amp; regime. We would be safe to assume (hate that word) that they built, maintained and operated these facilities correctly. 

Various_Patient6583

What a shit sandwich we all have to take a bite from. Trust the Trump administration, trust the Israeli administration under Netanyahu or trust the Iranians? And the obvious answer is trust none of them. Then in the future, Iran tests a nuclear bomb and becomes a nuclear state like North Korea.

J-the-Kidder

haveabeerwithfear

How can Fordow be more damaged than Natanz and Isafahan? I thought Fordow was the hardest to destroy. That's just odd.

MythDetector

Yeah I didn’t like that we were bombing Iran- but like I was surprised we only went in once. If we’re going to destroy their nuke sites we should have finished the job.

epicfail1994

I’m surprised the strikes destroyed any percentage of Iranian nuclear capability. Not because the B2 bombers and the bombs they dropped aren’t good, but the entire mission was to point out the fact that US bombers can go anywhere and not be detected.

Maverick_1882

Really impressive that apparently we "totally obliterated" Iran's nuclear program just two weeks ago and Iran was able to construct an entirely new nuclear site between then and now.

FireworkFuse

here comes new Iranian strikes to distract everyone from Epstein.

23north

More proof Trump doesn't understand half the words he uses. Obliterated.  Yeah.. mmhmm.  This will probably be reason enough for him to try and go back and blow the rest of it up..  well that or the EPSTEIN FILES...  HEY PEDO POLITICIANS... Hopefully your days in congress are numbered and your orange taco man follows you to jail. . 

Release the Epstein Files...

AuburnHairedCrow

I’m surprised it’s even one.  It was obviously just a bit of Kabuki theater from the start.  And as usual Trumpers ate it up.

Hrothgar_unbound

If they say we went 1 for 3, I am more likely to believe we went 0 for 6.

Kinks4Kelly

Trump just did it to distract from Epstein

KingRBPII

For all our supposed might, we have started a fight for no reason at all and whiffed badly

Commercial_Self1416

I guess we'll have to bomb them again to get Trump a lock on that Nobel Peace Prize.

Pattonias

The man of "peace" surpassed Biden in air strikes in not even six months into this thing. 

Electrical_Room5091

restore_democracy

If you have a lick of sense you put your "nuclear research site" sign a thousand miles away from where your nuclear research site is.

Nabrok_Necropants

The biggest hurdle might actually be turning the enriched gas back into metal.

Drak_is_Right

Conflatulations12

Well, I trust Reuters more than the US government.  All this saving is going on to get all the American welfare criminals! Love the candidate of peace /puke #shittyending

Smooth_Value

Sorry, but the current government has lost all credibility and trust. Maybe they should stop being pedophiles?

Hidden_Landmine

Hmmm, then what does “obliterated” mean?

Timely_Choice_4525

Cool, so we’re still in a state of nuclear ambiguity on the part of Iran’s capability to create nuclear weapons if they wanted to.

Which isn’t too different from Israel’s ambiguity over their undeclared stockpile of nuclear weapons an not signing the nuclear nonproliferation treaty: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_deliberate_ambiguity

Mythosaurus

So I guess that means we gotta go back in? Is that the intent in making a article on this.

brokenmessiah

A bloody hand reaching for the launch button after an attack: 🫳🔘

Vogt156

Fake news. The strike was like no one had ever seen before and they have set back the Iranian nuclear development by 3 days.

CanadianDiver

Peoria309

Square_Level4633

Oh no! Do we still need to kill people? 

quiksilver10152

Then we’ll blow them up again in 6 months. I mean fuck Trump - for like, so many reasons, including that he lied about his bombing being effective - but we can just do this again in a few months, what’s the difference. 

Honestly what’s the worst that could happen? Iran hates us? Oh no

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AutoModerator

Kind of hilarious that Fordoh is the one that was destroyed and they didn’t try to totally destroy the other 2.


&gt; U.S. strikes are expected to change over time, and according to two of the current officials, as the process progresses, the findings suggest more damage than previous assessments revealed. That assessment remains for now the current thinking on the impact of the strikes, officials said.

…

&gt; the vast majority of enriched uranium at Isfahan and Fordo and that thus it would be extremely difficult for the Iranians to extract it to resume enrichment, according to the official. The United States has not seen indications that Iran is trying to dig out the facilities, two officials said.

&gt; As NBC News has reported, the Israeli government believes at least some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium remains intact but buried beneath the Isfahan facility, according to a senior Israeli government official who briefed reporters in Washington last week. The official said, however, that Israel considers the material effectively unreachable, because it is watching and will conduct new strikes if it believes Iran is trying to dig up the uranium. The official also said Israel believes Iran’s nuclear program has been set back by up to two years.

&gt; Iran’s air defenses have been largely destroyed, making it all but impossible for Iran to defend against further strikes on facilities in the future, the White House official said.

TACO.

&gt; Beginning during the Biden administration, as early as last fall and into this spring, Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, had developed a plan to go “all-in” on striking Iran, according to a current U.S. official and two former officials. That option was designed to “truly decimate” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, in the words of one of the former officials.

&gt; Trump was briefed on the so-called all-in plan, but it was rejected ultimately because it would have required a sustained period of conflict.

Agreeable_Floor_2015

&gt;President Donald Trump was briefed on that plan, but it was rejected because it was at odds with his foreign policy instincts to extract the United States from conflicts abroad, not dig deeper into them, as well as the possibility of a high number of casualties on both sides, one of the current officials and one of the former officials said.


To me this just looks half assed. It still is a new war, but not accomplishing a decisive victory.


I also question the casualties on "both sides" who would the US lose? Iran hadn't any air defense By that time.


&gt;As NBC News has reported, the Israeli government believes at least some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium remains intact but buried beneath the Isfahan facility, according to a senior Israeli government official who briefed reporters in Washington last week. The official said, however, that Israel considers the material effectively unreachable, because it is watching and will conduct new strikes if it believes Iran is trying to dig up the uranium. The official also said Israel believes Iran’s nuclear program has been set back by up to two years.


Two years is a significant gap, but in that time Trump might have slipped so much mentally he'll either nuke Iran or let them be.

lAljax

&gt;The recent assessment is a snapshot of the damage U.S. strikes inflicted amid an intelligence-gathering process that administration officials have said is expected to continue for months. Assessments of Iran’s nuclear program after the U.S. strikes are expected to change over time, and according to two of the current officials, as the process progresses, the findings suggest more damage than previous assessments revealed. That assessment remains for now the current thinking on the impact of the strikes, officials said.

The only part of this article that really matters. There are 18 different agencies in the intelligence community and all of them are gonna have different opinions based on different means and sources that will evolve over time. We’re already seeing this with DIA vs CIA assessments.

Anyone claiming to know ***with 100% certainty*** what really happened in an underground bunker this quickly is wrong. Of course, this “evidence based” sub won’t let that stop them from jerking off.

RiceKrispies29

A spectacular success the likes of which the world has never seen before in the history of spectacular successes.

Iapzkauz

Trump called it the 12 day war because that’s how long it set Irans nuclear program back

DEEP_STATE_NATE

This article is journalistic malpractice. The headline and opening emphasize “only one in three” sites were destroyed without mentioning that the attack was only supposed to completely destroy one of the sites (as shown by the choice and quantity of munitions at each site).

But most egregious is the closing paragraph:

“Iran has long denied that it wants to build a nuclear weapon, a position its foreign minister reiterated in an interview with NBC News the day before the U.S. strikes.”

Not even a tangential mention that the US IC believes differently, or that there is concrete evidence (from when Israel stole the Iranian nuclear archives in 2018) to the contrary, or that the IAEA has said otherwise…what happened to “journalists should call a lie a lie”? What happened to “present both sides of a contested issue”?

undocumentedfeatures

Trump wanted the spectacle. That was always point. Not surprising he didn't choose the most strategically sound approach:

"But the two others were not as badly damaged and may have been degraded only to a point where nuclear enrichment could resume in the next several months if Iran wants it to, according to a recent U.S. assessment of the destruction caused by the military operation, five current and former U.S. officials familiar with the assessment told NBC News."

And instead of real results, we have the usual MAGA dickridder bullshit:

"In a statement of his own, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said: “The credibility of the Fake News Media is similar to that of the current state of the Iranian nuclear facilities: destroyed, in the dirt, and will take years to recover. President Trump was clear and the American people understand: Iran’s nuclear facilities in Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz were completely and totally obliterated. There is no doubt about that.”

jpk195

Wake up, babe. New definition of "totally obliterated" just dropped.

Xeynon

The attack on Fordo which they deemed the most important was a success from reading the article and other sources. 

One of the sites, Isfahan, was targeted by Tomahawk Cruise Missiles and that was a deeply embedded complex, so that was never going to have long term consequences as they only destroyed the surfaces facilities and didn’t use bunker busters at that site.

It appears the attack on Natanz was probably a failure.

LFC908

Now that the hype and public scrutiny has died down, DJT doesn't feel the need to have the Intelligence Community edit the facts.

awuafib

Again, Trump lied. Not that intelligence assessments depended on Trump.

steve_ample

The full article still describes a more positive outlook than the initial leaked reports which were basically claiming that the strikes destroyed none of their targets.

It seems like Israeli and US intelligence are now both saying that Fordo was damaged enough to be not worth reclaiming, and that the iranians have not been seen trying to reclaim it. This has been the biggest question mark, so now that we're starting to see some consensus on this, it is relieving. That would mean Fordow was the one site that was mostly destroyed. The other two apparently had their own underground sections, and we didn't even try to hit those because they were out of range if the gbu-57, so they only attacked the above ground portions, so the underground portions of Isfahan and Natanz were not damaged. So those are the two that aren't mostly destroyed.

So a bit of a mixed bag. The more interesting things in this report were that 1) the US knew these strikes wouldn't completely end the Iranian nuclear program, because they had a separate plan to do so that would have required a multi week air campaign across 6 different sites. And 2) seems like the US was more concerned with sending a message that they were willing to use force if negotiations didn't work. 

All of this implies that - when you strip away the idiotic chest pounding propaganda of Trump and his cabinet - the strikes achieved their goal. It's just that the goal wasn't "total obliteration" from the start. The goal appears to have been a strategic show of force, to show Iran that we *could* destroy their facilities, but in a way that hopefully didn't trigger a full scale war. The US specifically avoided strike plans that would have caused casualties, in an apparent effort to minimize retaliation.

Personally I'm not coming away from this article feeling like the strikes were a failure, despite the headline. But it does confirm that you can't trust shit coming out of Hegseth and Trump's mouths.

Ixziga

If you read the article the attack on Fordo, the fortified centrifuge bunker buried hundreds of feet underground, that many were saying wasn’t successful was deemed a success. We literally did a Star Wars and blew apart a fortified cap over two series of ventilation shafts then dropped successive bombs straight down the shafts.

felis_scipio

neloish

I mean they’re in a hell of a lot worse shape than they were before the strikes. Trump is an idiot but the strategic equation has changed and more strikes by Israel and the US are both available and likely (and easier now) if Iran keeps trying to build a weapon.

renge-refurion

meninblck9

No wonder trump hypes it so much, it was a failure 

fitzgoldy

Of course they didn't. Trump also told Iran he was going to attack them, just like Iran told him they were going to attack U.S. bases.

It's all a ploy to make their ancient, decrepit leaders look strong.

joefred111

[deleted]

Obama and Biden loyalists misaligned the bomb sights and targeting.

Don't fall for the CNN hoax

/S

BambiLeila

Trump is a pathetic ….he acted like it completely ended Iran’s nuclear ambitions…Trump is a liar

ComplexWrangler1346

MeMyselfAnd1234

NO IT DIDNT! AND IF IT DID IT WAS BECAUSE OF BIDEN!!!!

God_I_Hope_Its_Urine

So we flew B2s in a long bombing run and exposed them further to tracking by Russians and other non-allied states - and we didn't even get three targets in a third world country?

karankshah

Well if there is anything Trump is good at, it’s covering up the truth.

TheInfiniteSlash

But I thought it was the greatest bombing campaign ever? Set them back decades? That’s what we were told.

That-Management

Zazen1372

OldGreyTroll

Cool. You delayed Iran's ability to produce a nuke by *months* and effectively ended most diplomatic efforts to convince them not to. Such winning.

RobutNotRobot

I swear the news they are feeding us is just propaganda or pleasing his base with lies. I knew there was little damage done. I have a hard time believing any numbers or data coming out of the government, including inflation percent and unemployment.  I do believe the US debt and spending deficits numbers and politicians playing the blame game or the not my problem game.

Og4453vx93

Got the hat. Missed the cattle. No matter. New news cycle.

hippodribble

&gt;NBC News has also learned that U.S. Central Command had developed a much more comprehensive plan to strike Iran that would have involved hitting three additional sites in an operation that would have stretched for several weeks instead of a single night, according to a current U.S. official and two former U.S. officials. 

Trump is the dumbest President in US history.  He had the opportunity to fully destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program and chose not to do it.  The risk to the US is minimal since Iran's air defenses were already destroyed and most of its missiles get intercepted.

B0wwsser

So now they can restart the drumbeat of "Iran is only weeks away from a nuclear weapon."

stubob

Sounds like a call to continue bombing. The diplomatic approach didn't work (no surprises there, the ayatollahs are nuts), it's gonna be time to follow up on the threats soon.

ItsTrueIHaveExcel

It's Powell's fault and Biden's for nominating him.

Salford1969

Scary thing is I think we are gonna find out real soon where all that enriched uranium went, and not in a good way.

TheUnknownPrimarch

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PoliticsModeratorBot

The rhetoric makes it sound like he thinks he can drop bombs and then just walk away from this

AgentArnold

[Truth Social Post](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114724035571020048):

&gt; We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Because we live in a world where we learn about *attacks on nuclear sites* from The President's Social Media website.

Quidfacis_

How are we supposed to fight a two front war with Iran AND Los Angeles?

Pappyhorn

This coming just a couple hours after he bitched and moaned about wanting the Nobel Peace Prize.

NeoMegaRyuMKII

Drops bombs. "Now is the time for peace"

I really despise this man.

themattboard

From the CNN live updates feed:

22 min ago: Trump prefers a diplomatic option toward Iran ...

3 min ago: Trump announces air strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran

Wild how quickly that did a complete 180

CPOx

Rambo_One2

conservatives are acting like everything is over now that we bombed them and everything will be fine but doesn't this mean we just entered a war?

SoundSouljah

"NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!"? The time for peace was before Trump cancelled the Iran nuclear deal. Not after we've dropped bombs on them.

jamiegal

- Implode the economy
- Explode the national debt
- Start another war in the Middle East that our grandchildren will still be dealing with
- Fracture relationships with our allies all over the world 
- Restrict even more freedoms with increased surveillance on us citizens
- Wreck the environment like a rockstar on a bender in a hotel

But hey, here’s your fucking eggs, and also we bullied some trans kids. God bless America.

we_are_sex_bobomb

BringBackBoomer

Drops bombs... "now is the time for peace"

Impeach the mad king.

pierre_x10

I’m at the Bernie rally in Tulsa. He found out while on stage. It was surreal.

While talking about the “Big Beautiful bill” one of the crowd goers yells “we just bombed Iran!” He looked stunned. Then an aide walked up with a press clipping… while reading it he lowered and started shaking his head… muttering “it’s just so unconstitutional…”

Edit 2: the gentleman sitting next to me taped the whole sequence. Will post it once I get home.

Edit 3: https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1936589277548138931?t=MwKB-DSfdoF74r4fZr9CRw&amp;s=19

Edit 4: https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2492396011

At 2:00:53 is when he finds out.

inxile7

Enjoy your “low gas prices”. Shit’s about to get real expensive.

CoyoteExcellent1042

Money to go to war. No money to feed hungry children or forgive student loans.

crownpuff

Recent US airstrikes targeted three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites, primarily the Fordow facility, significantly delaying Iran's capabilities.

US Strikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities

Why This Matters

Public Sentiment Summary

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