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Duane Moore

Burnt Ends
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Everything posted by Duane Moore

  1. I mean we’ve got the flight trackers going already, it may as well be a coaching search thread. And btw, I’ve done some analysis of the curtains on Khamenei’s latest video and he’s totally at the hotel in Horseshoe Bay.
  2. Whoa. First time I’ve heard of this guy but he’s apparently the current CEO of (cue ominous music) Cambridge Analytica. He’s reading the tea leaves that the B-2’s are on non-stop mission:
  3. The B-2’s were at DG in March or April but left sometime before 6/13. That original OSINT post let has since corrected himself to say it looks like they’re going to Guam.
  4. Regime change has to come organically from the people of Iran. We and Israel should not play any part in it. End Iran’s nuclear program, degrade their ballistic missile capability, then stop the offensive, declare victory, and let nature take its course inside Iran.
  5. Absolutely. They are moving the pieces in place for if/when the decision is made to apply maximum pressure. I’m glad Trump is taking his time and exhausting every option for a deal, even though he’s put that hapless boob Witkoff in charge of it. Still, I don’t see how we agree to any terms short of a Libya-style dismantling of the nuclear program and Khamenei in his bunker seems utterly defiant on any concessions so I doubt we even get back to the table.
  6. Last post said B-2’s headed to Diego Garcia, others now saying Guam. Not sure if Guam could be a stopover on the way to DG, which is the closest launch point for a mission to Iran. Also, this:
  7. The B-2’s just left Whiteman AFB, heading to Diego Garcia, so it may take a little longer than that.
  8. Good article in the FT about the China-Iran relationship and in particular China’s dependence on Iranian oil. https://www.ft.com/content/c1398efb-99d9-4709-9f24-9c7d9057e421
  9. The military historian Edward Luttwak has made this point many times - “the Han don’t fight” as he says it. Fair enough, but they seem to be building up their entire military with the purpose of taking Taiwan, an island that is very close to them and very far from us. With the PLA having more than 2 million people and their shipbuilding far outstripping every other country on earth, at some point quantity becomes a quality of its own. Hope we don’t ever have to find out.
  10. Does crossing the Yalu River into North Korea count as “into the world?”
  11. I wonder how China, world’s largest importer of oil, nearly half of which comes through the straits, will react to that?
  12. Take a look at this analysis of Russia’s reaction. I guess Marjorie Taylor Greene’s vaunted BRICS defense pact isn’t coming to the rescue. If anyone has the full NYT article, I’d love to read it.
  13. Pure speculation on my part, but I’d think the Israelis didn’t go into this without a plan for dealing with Fordow themselves, knowing that predicting Trump’s decision is about as reliable as a 247 crystal ball pick on a junior a year away from signing day. Given how meticulously they’ve planned all the rest of it, I’d be surprised if they were going to do the equivalent of relying upon the FBI to cut the power at Nakatomi Tower that would override the emergency locks on the vault. I’d also expect they have eyes on Fordow from the outside (and maybe the inside) and if they detect large movements of material out of it, they will hit the trucks with their JDAMS. Again, all speculation.
  14. Two weeks from tomorrow is July 4. Because it’s Trump, that may not be a coincidence.
  15. At ease. WW3 won’t start for another 2 weeks.
  16. Anymore? Our intel has been missing countries developing nuclear weapons since the late 90’s (e.g., Pakistan and North Korea). I’m sure we have better spies in many countries than Israel, but not in one that Israel considers to be its existential threat like Iran. The Mossad knew where dozens of high ranking officials would be on the first night of the war and had been running a workshop manufacturing drones in Tehran for years. I do trust their intelligence on Iranian capabilities more than our assessment. This is from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: At the Fordow plant, located near the city of Qom, the Iranians have enough centrifuges (including IR-6s, their more advanced type) and uranium hexafluoride gas to produce several nuclear weapons. They could probably produce enough weapon-grade (90 percent) enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon within five to six days. https://thebulletin.org/2025/06/the-united-states-may-destroy-the-fordow-enrichment-plant-it-wont-make-the-iranian-nuclear-threat-go-away/#post-heading Note that the article is not a pro-Israeli slant, it says bombing Fordow probably isn’t enough, laments the breaking of the JCPOA, but still says the danger is there. It’s easy to blame Bibi, he’s made a lot of enemies. But it’s also worth noting that the entire military and political structure of Israel seems to believe the threat assessment as well. This is chief opposition leader Yair Lapid:
  17. Watch this space. Dan is extremely plugged in on the Israeli side and has contacts within the administration (even though he’s more of a Bushie).
  18. Absolutely. It’s such a shame because they really should not have any natural enmity with Israel. The two countries don’t even share a border. If they spent their efforts trying to ensure the prosperity and security of their people rather than defining their nation around the elimination of an entire state solely due to their religion, everyone one in the region would be better off.
  19. I’m coming around to the idea that if the nukes at Fordow can be eliminated and they keep degrading the ballistic missile capability, keeping Khameini in power may be the preferred outcome. He’s proven to be completely outclassed in this conflict. Keep letting the old fool run the country into the ground. Obviously, if there was an Ataturk type who could replace him with a secular democracy that would be the fantasy scenario, but I’m not holding my breath on that. Reza Pahlavi doesn’t seem to have any substantial base of support and I haven’t seen anyone else (either an individual or party/movement) that might step up into that role.
  20. We got 26 years of stability from Iran with the Shah. In foreign policy, that’s about as good a result as you can hope for. No action we take in another country is going to produce a permanent set of conditions favorable to our interests.
  21. Seen lots of data points like this on the abstract question of Iran getting nukes: So the “why should we care if Iran gets a bomb” crowd may have a large online voice but are definitely in the minority. Question then becomes how far we should go to produce that outcome. I’m personally very comfortable with a B-2 dropping a MOAB or two on Fordow to seal the deal, especially now that the air defenses are gone, and Iran’s proxies have been largely defanged. Pretty sure that’s going to be a politically popular position with the average American as well. We don’t like Forever Wars but we don’t mind the isolated air strike with maximum value (see, e.g., Soleimani, Qasem, Zawahiri, Ayman-al, etc.). I’m much more agnostic on regime change, as much as the mullahs would deserve it karmically for what they’ve done to that country. I tend to think that what comes after would be better than the status quo, but that’s at best a 60/40 proposition. We shouldn’t be involved either way. The value of preventing them from going nuclear means we don’t have to pay attention to them any longer and can focus limited military assets in the Indo-Pacific countering China.
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