Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Despite damage, the Iranian nuclear program is not destroyed and they can rebuild if they choose to. They likely removed much material from the underground sites before the U.S. strikes. Because the Israeli strikes started a week before the U.S. strikes, that gave Iran a week to disperse their material and equipment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3_zSmb-sGg
Good description of Trump’s attempt to negotiate with Iran, it not yet succeeding, and then Israel deciding to attack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tFSro590Xg
Iran had not decided if they would pursue a nuclear weapon, but their weapons program continued in a manner that reduced the time they’d need to get a bomb if they made that decision. So, the statement that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon is misleading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS4DJFlqIxs
Did Iran shoot down Israel’s F-35s? What would it mean if they did?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfE5_-vxm70
How Israeli Commandos Hit Deep in Iran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_cwjNF-sfc
“Even if the regime falls, there’s no reason to be certain that something better will replace it, current and former officials warn. A failed, leaderless Iranian state could be a breeding ground for all sorts of new problems. A much more militarized autocracy also could take over, one unabashedly determined to obtain a nuclear weapon.
“History tells us it can always be worse,” Jonathan Panikoff, a former U.S. intelligence officer, wrote in an online analysis. “Israel might find itself in a perpetual, ongoing, and far more intense war that is no longer in the shadows, as it has been for years.”
Israel, however, may not be thinking that many steps ahead, argued one U.S. official who has long worked on the Middle East.
“I don’t think they care enough about what comes next as long as it’s too weak to threaten Israel,” the official said.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/13/israel-iran-regime-attack-goal-column-00405153
“Iran is the most aggressive and dangerous totalitarian force of our time. Its leaders seek to weaken and destroy free society, democracy and human rights with Russian and Chinese support. In Iran, women are systematically oppressed and abused. Homosexuals are murdered. Those who think differently are imprisoned and tortured. In Tehran, the cynical abuse of the civilian population in Gaza as human shields is also cold-bloodedly conceived and financed.
According to official state doctrine, the primary goal of the mullahs in Tehran is the annihilation of the State of Israel. Ayatollah Khamenei has described Israel as a “cancerous tumor.” And clocks in the streets of Tehran celebrate countdowns to the “destruction of Israel.”
But Israel is only the first target. Once Israel falls, Europe and America will be the focus. Radical Sunni and Shiite Islamism has been preparing for this for decades. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie, 9/11, the attacks in Paris, the caliphate of ISIS — each event was a warning sign. Only those who did not want to see the signs are surprised today. The attacks are directed against our values, our way of life.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/14/israel-iran-attack-freedom-autocracy-00406288
“At 5:30 a.m. on June 10, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard tweeted a cryptic, three-minute video warning that “political elite and warmongers” are “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers” — and that the world is “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.”
Trump saw the unauthorized video and became incensed, complaining to associates at the White House that she had spoken out of turn, according to three people familiar with the episode — two of them inside the administration and all granted anonymity to describe sensitive dynamics.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/17/gabbard-trump-00411685
“The big question, in other words, is whether Netanyahu has not set his sights on regime change. Whether his sights have not been blinkered by a new logic deriving from the manifest results of his own escalation — that Iran’s nuclear program and missile program are one; that given the danger to Israel merely from the missiles, leaving the Ayatollah’s regime in charge itself amounts to an existential threat.
“As we achieve our objective,” Netanyahu addressed Iranians on YouTube last Saturday, “we are also clearing the path for you to achieve your objective, your freedom.” On Monday, he told ABC News that killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would “not escalate the conflict but end the conflict.” How does one retreat from this logic any more than from the demand for total victory in Gaza?
Most vexing of all, why, under these circumstances, should the Iranian regime stop the war? It says it will be prepared to put enrichment back under international monitoring, as under the previous nuclear deal. But, for now, why capitulate?
Why not launch a dozen missiles every night, or every third night, keeping Israeli business depressed, our airspace closed, our sleep foiled — and watch us squirm? Why not tie up virtually the entire Israeli Air Force looking for missile development in a territory the size of Alaska and over four hours away? Why not deplete our reserves of anti-missile missiles that cost a couple of million dollars each?
True enough, the Israeli Air Force has destroyed a great many missile manufacturing sites. More damage will be inflicted. But destroy Iran’s very capacity to produce missiles? Does not the Iranian regime, too, see itself in a war for survival — a “war,” at any rate, according to the Supreme Leader — and does it not have the resources to sustain a war economy?
Finally, will Bibi, of all people, the leader in charge of Gazan carnage, bring Iranians to overthrow their government? Israel has now killed over 200 Iranian citizens by going after human “nuclear infrastructure” in various residential complexes. Just because ordinary people disdain the regime, that does not mean they welcome Israelis buzzing their neighborhoods, blowing up every economic asset from which the regime’s missile program could conceivably profit from. Even some people who may “not agree with the Establishment,” the journalist Abas Aslani told CNN on Monday, agree that Israel must be answered with “a crushing response.””
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/17/israel-iran-letter-from-jerusalem-00408540
One aspect of the Israel-Iran war is supply of missiles and missile interceptors. The U.S. and Israel have limited interceptors and build them slowly. Iran has a variety of weapons, but only have two-thirds of their ballistic missiles left (most of the gone one-third being destroyed on the ground).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KutDAL8hXgU