Israel-Iran Conflict
I have been including daily updates on the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Iran in RNN. Too much happened overnight (and stuff that happened previously was fleshed out) to put it in that post.
Lets start with the Iranian heavy water reactor at Arak. That facility – which while inactive would have produced plutonium for nuclear weapons – was hit by the IAF within the past 24 hours. The IDF released footage of the strike.
If you have a Twitter account, a click-through is in order on this one. Ronnie does some good analysis on the way this strike was recorded. Long story short, Israel had someone, possibly multiple someones, within a few miles of the reactor when the strike occurred. That seems to be a recurring theme of this conflict; Israel has someone inside Iran doing things.
The before and after is highly instructive.
I’m not a nuclear reactor expert – I just know that pressing AZ-5 on an RBMK reactor will make it blow up – but that hole in the dome of the containment vessel doesn’t look good. And if you’re wondering why the images don’t look the same, they are rotated 180°.
The nuclear site at Natanz was also hit last night. I have not seen any video of those strikes, nor have I seen any ‘after’ images. That doesn’t mean the strikes were ineffective, knowing what I know I’d say the Israelis hit what they wanted to, it just means it hasn’t been published. I would add that with all the Israeli strikes at Natanz over the last week, unless you were highly practiced in BDA, it would be quite difficult to ascertain when the damage was done.
Israel hasn’t been getting everything going it’s way. Last night/this morning Iranian ballistic missiles slammed into a hospital in Be’er Sheva in southern Israel and an apartment block in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv.
It appears the missile fired at Soroka hospital, the largest hospital in southern Israel, was armed with a cluster munitions warhead.
As of this writing, while there were dozens of injuries, there were no deaths associated with either of these strikes.
Some new details about how Israel got a large portion of the Iranian military command structure together in one building before blowing them all up just came to light.
The details sound like some bad B movie plot. Israel compromised the Iranian command back channels and placed phone calls instructing the senior leaders to meet in a bunker at a specific time. Being cogs in a repressive regime, they did what they were told, when they were told and showed up.
So did the IAF. With an explosive surprise.
That strike, and the highly targeted followups, have prevented a coordinated retaliatory strike by the Iranians. You couldn’t pay me enough to be on the Iranian General Staff right now. (Not that I’d have taken a spot anyway)
Mossad and AMAN are scary AF. AMAN is the IDF intelligence apparatus.
There are a couple of random notes that I need to share before I wrap this piece up. Both have to do with US assets.
First, the US is repositioning any unprotected aircraft or vessel in the region. All planes at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar that do not have hardened parking revetments have been flown elsewhere. Most of the vessels at Naval Support Activity Bahrain have also been repositioned.
Do I see this as evidence of an imminent US strike on Iran? Meh. I think it’s just prudence.
I mean, I think there is a strike coming. I think it’s going to be on the Fordow site and its going to be done by B2s dropping GBU 57s. When is the question.
Finally, I feel the need to give y’all a bit of intel on the GBU 57A seeing as it’s in the news. A couple of days ago I mentioned the MOP in RNN, here’s what it actually is and what it is actually capable of.
A specially designed and hardened steel case is filled with 5342 lbs of a binary high explosive (a mix of AFX-757 and PBXN-114). The BLU-127 bomb body is 20 and a half feet long and has a diameter of 31 inches. It has lattice type guidance fins and uses a GPS and inertial guidance system. The whole thing weighs around 30,000 pounds. It can penetrate up to 60 meters of reinforced concrete.
The reason the GBU 57A/B is in the news is the Fordow nuclear research facility in Iran. That facility, a key part of Iranian nuclear weapons research and production, is built into the side of a mountain. The deepest parts are some 90 meters below the surface. The size and weight of the GBU 57 limits deployability to one airframe – the B2 Spirit.
