So about that "leaked" initial report.

Since nobody has actually assessed any damages, this is just a reiteration of pre-bombing analysis.

So let's start with the obvious. Nobody has gone to the mountain, much less dug up anything to see what has and what has not been destroyed. Any assessment at this point is based on two things:

• The pre-bombing predictions.

• Whether the bombs hit the target.

It was said that there was disagreement within and between various agencies as to what degree these bombings would work to take out the facility. The most optimistic viewpoints suggested that it would completely destroy everything in the mountain, while the most pessimistic were that it would just cave in much the mountain, bury everything, but not actually destroy anything.

Let's also understand, that this was a single agency (DIA) providing an assessment and their were plenty of opinions from a variety of people in a variety of agencies that provided the other assessment. Certainly we have assessments of dramatic success that are being echoed by the President, by Hegseth, and by other military commanders that has come from others within the scientific military community. It was no secret that there was disagreement as to how this would play out. We cannot just assume someone is right or wrong because we want them to be.

The one thing to consider is that nobody is suggested that the mission did not go according to plan. It would be one thing to provide a negative assessment and suggest it was because the planes missed targets, or bombs didn't detonate, or something actually went wrong. But according to pretty much everyone involved, the plans could not have gone any smoother and everything that was meant to happen, happened. So we are looking at the best case scenario (based on the military operation) and still getting a negative assessment from the DIA. This is why we know it was pre-cooked and was always going to be the assessment regardless of what happened.

At issue is the fact that the bunker busters are supposed to be able to dig down to around 200 feet before setting off the explosion, while the facilities in question were thought to be in some places 300 feet deep. The plan was to drop several bombs (6 as it turned out) in strategic locations and then drop another set of bombs down the hole created by the initial bombs. In this case, it would appear that four of these locations got two bombs down the same hole, while two of them got three. Obviously this has never been tested before in real life, so we are relying on physics and math to figure out the best possible plan. This was what they came up with.

So according to the optimists, the second (or third bombs) would actually start their digging much further down into the mountain, thus digging down deeper than 200 feet before they set off their explosion. The pessimists were less confident that this approach would work, and not confident that anything would make it to 300 feet. While I have a math degree and some science background, I don't feel qualified to really guess at what is going on there. But it seems to me that fourteen 30,000 pound bombs with giant explosives should be more than enough to destroy just about anything that is man-made. 300 feet doesn't really sound like enough to stop fourteen of these bombs.

The one issue that makes this seriously problematic and hard to believe is the suggestion that it simply set them back a few months. Even if the blasts did little more than bury everything under hundreds of feet of rock and dirt, I doubt Iran can figure out a way to secretly go back and recover everything in weeks or months. This facility took years to build. How is it that we suggest it can suddenly just be rebuilt in hardly any time. Even if they can recover equipment, would it still be workable after being crushed by a mountain collapsing on top of them.

Also, let's not forget. Israel and the Trump administration will be watching. Any attempts to start to dig back into that facility will be met with more attacks. Iran would be prudent to not even try at this point.