Bomb-Ast

6 thoughts on “Bomb-Ast”

1. H: I know it’s not your bailiwick to speculate on the particulars or timings of markets or geopolitics, but, I would love to hear your opinion on how the endgame might play out: which factions within IRGC could end up filling the power vacuum; who else is a candidate (MOIS? Other theocrats?); the degree to which Mossad might try to place its thumb on the scales of power, and whom they might choose to back.

   The quick-and-dirty bomb angle (pun intended) is an interesting one, but if memory services, nascent nuclear powers have typically announced their presence with a test. If Iran is having trouble scraping together enough sufficiently-enriched fissile material for a crude bomb, they’re not very likely to pull off a successful small-yield test.

   There’s an entire nuclear physics angle that I could educate myself on, but in truth, the subject is boring to me; it seems that few believe that a functioning bomb is a near-term achievable goal.

2. Okay, I followed the link to the RFI article, and I have a question for Rafael Grossi. Unfortunately, he’s not returning my calls, so I’ll just send my question out into the æther.

   I get that the centrifuges are hugely delicate machines, and can see how any vibrations or imbalance could destroy them. But isn’t that only true when they’re running? Aren’t they a whole lot less fragile if they’re turned off? Were they actually running when the bombs dropped? And if so, why in Allah’s name would they do that?

   1. I mean, look, I think the truth’s somewhere in the middle here. I don’t buy Trump’s “obliterated” remark, but who did? Nobody. Sure, people quoted him. I quoted him. But nobody ever takes him 100% literally. So why’s everybody pretending, days later, like it’s this big betrayal of the public trust? “Oh my God, you mean Trump exaggerated? No! Say it ain’t so!”

      This is a guy who still insists that US economic growth during his first term constituted “a boom the likes of which the world’s never seen before,” despite there being no evidence (none, not a shred nor a morsel) to back up that claim.

      I’m not defending the guy, I’m just saying that given what we know about him, it almost seems more disingenuous for us to pretend to have believed him in the first place than it does for him to have de facto lied.

      I suspect our collective disdain for the man is causing us, in this situation, to imply something that’s a little bit ridiculous. I don’t want to sound like Karoline Leavitt here, but you are going to do some damage when you drop 360,000 pounds of explosives on something.

      I don’t care if Fordo’s made of Adamantium: Trump destroyed something on or under that mountain. We just don’t know if it was — you know — a cafeteria, a gamerooom or something more important.

      I try to emphasize this occasionally, and I think this is probably as good a time as any to reiterate it: Whatever you want to say about Trump and Netanyahu, you don’t want to accidentally end up rooting for Khamenei to get a nuclear weapon. It’s kind of the same principle as when I used to have to remind myself that just because I found the US presence in Iraq to be abhorrent didn’t thereby make Qassem Soleimani some kind of hero for running a network of militias that maimed and killed American servicemembers. Soleimani, fascinated though I was with the man, was a murderous monster. So’s Khamenei. The fact that Trump’s a crazy clown and Netanyahu’s evil doesn’t change that.

      1. I can just see it now, Trump’s next post on Truth Social: “I can assure all Americans, according to our very fine intelligence, that the gameroom at Fordo was COMPLETELY OBLITERATED!”

      2. Your last paragraph is important to remember. In the context of “be careful of what you wish for.”

         Some years back during the last intifada I was passing some earnest young pro-Palestinian demonstrators. I told a couple of them that I supported their concerns about how Palestinian people were being treated. But then I asked “But seriously, would you want to live under a strict Islamic regime like Iran? You know, women covered up and no beer or weed?”

         That was met with some foot shuffling and hems & haws

3. The Federal Reserve put out some numbers last week on its expectations for the economy. It took down GDP growth for this year from 1.7 to 1.4.

   That matches the World Bank number that came out a couple of weeks ago.

   In 2024, the economy grew 2.8 percent.

   In Trump’s first year, it looks like we are on track to grow exactly half of what we grew in Biden’s last year.

   And unemployment is likely to hit 4.5 percent by the end of this year.

   The Fed is now more concerned about the economy than they were three months ago.

   When you’re moving towards slower growth, more unemployment and higher interest rates, that not the direction you want to be moving.