Last week, CNN claimed that Iran was essentially closer to building a bomb than they were before the strikes. Last month, they told us store shelves would be empty by now. Clearly, they do not believe we are capable of remembering what was said less than a week ago or considering the veracity of their statements based on something as simple as common sense.
Last week, CNN “reported” on a supposed intelligence assessment performed by the United States government in the aftermath of strikes on three key Iranian nuclear facilities, claiming essentially that Iran was closer to a bomb after the strikes than before, or as they put it, “The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it.” After claiming this report, which was needless to say leaked to them anonymously, was at “odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes ‘completely and totally obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities,” they claimed that two “of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely ‘intact.’ Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes. ‘So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,’ this person added.” According to CNN, they came to this conclusion because the bunker buster bombs that were supposed to penetrate underground facilities failed to do so and “the impact to all three sites — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — was largely restricted to aboveground structures.” CNN went so far as to engage another expert, “Jeffrey Lewis, a weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who has closely reviewed commercial satellite imagery of the strike sites” to agree “with the assessment that the attacks do not appear to have ended Iran’s nuclear program.” “The ceasefire came without either Israel or the United States being able to destroy several key underground nuclear facilities, including near Natanz, Isfahan and Parchin,” he said, referring to the ceasefire between Israel and Iran that Trump announced last Monday. “These facilities could serve as the basis for the rapid reconstitution of Iran’s nuclear program.” In the days that followed, it was revealed that the so-called report wasn’t really anything of the sort. It was instead a preliminary assessment of some kind that its own creators claimed they had low confidence in. Subsequently, it was revealed that the “report” was based primarily on intercepted Iranian chatter following the strikes rather than actual intelligence, which should obviously have been suspect to begin with when they know we are listening. In other words, CNN appears to have recycled an Iranian psyop to undermine the President of the United States on one of the most major foreign policy decisions in years if not decades.
The media reporting these details as if they were facts would be bad enough on its own, but there are two additional, much deeper issues at work. First, immediately before the strike many of the same media players were claiming that Iran was much, much further away from building a nuclear device than Israel was claiming at the time. Much was made of an appearance by the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, before Congress in March, where she claimed that US intelligence concluded Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and had no plans to do so. As the BBC framed it, “Gabbard shared a video of her full testimony before Congress in March, where she said US intelligence agencies had concluded Iran was not building nuclear weapons. Experts also determined Iran had not resumed its suspended 2003 nuclear weapons programme, she added in the clip, even as the nation’s stockpile of enriched uranium – a component of such weapons – was at an all-time high.” The New York Times engaged a panoply of experts who agreed that Iran was several months from having the necessary amount of enriched uranium, but at least a year from having an operable weapon. Last October, they reported that “To Build a Nuclear Bomb, Iran Would Need Much More Than Weeks, Nuclear experts see Iran facing a year of hard work.” In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists noted that it was possible they could build a bomb “within weeks,” but the reality was likely much longer. “How quickly could Iran make an atomic bomb once it has acquired enough weapons-grade uranium? Some nuclear experts argue it would take Iran anywhere between several months to up to a year. But China’s experience shows that Tehran could build a bomb much faster—in as little as three to five weeks.” In addition, much was also made that President Trump did not share any new intelligence suggesting the time to create a bomb had substantially been reduced. The Atlantic declared flatly “Trump Changed. The Intelligence Didn’t,” “The president’s decision to drop bombs on Iran was opportunistic, not a result of new information.” Shane Harris began by noting, “Whenever Donald Trump has contemplated confrontation with Iran, his decisions have been guided less by the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community than by his own calculation of risk and reward. At times he has pulled the trigger. At times he has backed down. All the while, the U.S. assessment of Iranian nuclear intentions has stayed remarkably consistent.” He went on to claim that the intelligence community believed that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formally suspended the program way back in 2003, some twenty two years ago. Rolling Stone said much the same, claiming, “‘There Is No Intel’: Trump’s Attacks on Iran Were Based on Vibes, Sources Say.”
Suddenly, however, we are supposed to believe that Iran was merely months away after their facilities were struck, even while reporting that whatever damage may have occurred beneath the surface, satellite imagery clearly showed that the tunnels into and out of these facilities had all collapsed. In other words, Iran would have to dig their way back into these facilities, full knowing that we could see them do so using our satellites and that they had no means to protect their crews from further strikes, then proceed to carefully inspect every piece of equipment for both visible and invisible damage, then thoroughly test it before returning to full-scale operations, all while we watched and all within a matter of months. To put this in perspective, Maui was ravaged by wildfires in August 2023, but the Army Corp of Engineers still hasn’t removed all of the debris and only a small number of homes have been replaced in almost two years – as of January, the number was three. The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, MD collapsed last March when a container ship struck one of its piers. Despite President Joe Biden committing funds to rebuild it as early as June last year, the project isn’t expected to be completed until the fall of 2023, if not later, and of course, everyone is aware of the wildfires that struck the Los Angeles area earlier this year. The total timeline to rebuild? It’s expected to take at least a year for basic infrastructure and up to 10 years for residential and commercial buildings, but Iran is going to rebuild, or at least partially rebuild, high-tech, extremely sensitive nuclear facilities in a matter of months. Of course, no one seriously believes this. The experts are not dumb in that sense. They know damn well that it will take months, if not years, for Iran to fully assess the damage, much less actually build a bomb. While we might believe the Caliphate isn’t rational in the sense we prize in the United States, no one could possibly be stupid enough to attempt the further enrichment of radioactive materials on potentially damaged equipment. Instead, this means they think you, the average person, the voter, the people who hold all political power in the United States are the stupid ones. In their low opinion of us all, they do not believe we are capable of remembering what was said less than a week earlier or considering the veracity of their statements based on something as simple as common sense, and they prove this over and over again, practically on a daily basis at this point. To put this in perspective, we began the month with the claim that store shelves would be empty and prices would be sky high by the end of the month. Did you have any trouble shopping for your barbeque to celebrate the Fourth of July later this month?
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 