Ein US-Geheimdienstmitarbeiter sagt, das iranische Regime sei immer noch intakt, weigert sich jedoch, Gespräche mit Trump über einen Krieg zu besprechen

All the politics aside, I think the coverage of ‘Iran’s nuclear threat’ has been really poor and the answers are a lot simpler than made out to be.

Iran had enough 60% HEU to build a small stockpile of nuclear weapons. The facilities were at least rendered temporarily inoperable.

The elements that aren’t clear (what happened to the HEU stockpile, centrifuges, how much of the underground facilities are intact) don’t matter *that much* to the big picture.

Iran has a low nuclear latency, and nothing at this point changes that. The existing HEU matters a lot less than the technical capacity to make HEU. We know they were excavating the struck sites, which doesn’t say much about about the timeline but does say a lot about the regimes intent.

Assuming Iran was not serious about agreeing to denuclearize (not 100% proven, but likely imo) – there are two options. You either keep striking until you have Iranian leaders agreeing to abandon the project, or you let Iran get nuclear weapons. (Likely triggering a wave of nuclear programs in the region).

There’s this huge focus on ‘how far away were they’ but this specific factor shouldn’t be that relevant to decision making unless the US believes a serious deal was on the table.