He has said 2 weeks for many months over Putin’s actions and does squat except repeat his 2 weeks threat, so I take 1 week with a pinch of salt.

That seems pretty final

Video​​​​​​​

Iranian Tv the regimes mouthpiece is possibly off the air.

​​​​​​​

That was a few days ago Nutty

A French AF A330 landed very soon after the 2 Iran aircraft.
Macron trying to interfere?
Go back to late 70's prior to Shah being thrown out, certain religious person issuing orders from France?

Or high level people doing a runner and hopefully heading to France ?.

Or retrieving French nationals and diplomats.

………….

And now for the pot calling the kettle black, Zaporizhzhia comes to mind.

Lavorov said in a statement to TASS that Israel's ongoing attacks on "peaceful" nuclear facilities in Iran are illegal

First 4 x F-22A arriving at RAF Lakenheath from 20:12:42 UK time on the video banner

For those that care, all four are FF tailcodes rather than the AK in the thumbnail.

https://archive.ph/4XLnC

Air and sea operation to bring home Israelis stranded abroad

Thousands of Israelis stran#ded abroad have started making their way back home in an exercise dubbed “Operation Safe Return” as flights #remain #cancelled and Israel’s airspace shut down amid conflict with Iran.

Six days into the military escalation that has led to regular air raid alerts in Israel due to Iranian missile and drone attacks, the country’s airport authority had begun to organise repatriation flights home, with the first planeload landing from Larnaca, Cyprus, on Wednesday morning.

Estimates say some 150,000 Israelis are abroad but wishing to return. Israel has created a committee to determine who will receive priority to do so, such as those with medical needs.

Sharon Kedmi, chief executive of the Israel Airports Authority, said: “Our aim is to bring back as many people as possible, but it is more important that they are safe. We are carrying out #assessments on an hourly basis.”

Up to 2,800 Israelis were #expected to fly back on Wednesday. “It’s a pleasure to be back in Israel,” Dror, one of the first passengers to return, told Israel’s Channel 12 after landing. “It’s better to be here,” he added. He was meant to return last #Friday, only for his flight to perform a U-turn 15 minutes before landing in Israel due to the start of the war……

Israel’s national security bureau# has advised citizens not to cross through the land borders, assessing the threat to Israelis at level four, the second-highest level. Passengers have also travelled to and from Israel by sea, including on ferries to Cyprus, a crossing that can take up to 20 hours.

The US embassy is organising #evacuation flights and cruise ship #departures for its citizens, said Mike Huckabee, the American ambassador to Israel, on Wednesday.

However, the UK has come under criticism from #stranded Britons in Israel. Although the Foreign Office now advises against all travel to the country, British citizens have been advised so far to notify the government in order to receive instructions on how best to leave…..

Latest reports seem to indicate a strike plan has been approved, but Trump is waiting to see if the Iranians will still come to the table - ignoring the learned experience that they've been salami slicing the west for the last 10-15 years on the nuclear issue.
Also Israel definitely has a plan to enter Fordo using special forces, and have informed the US - crazy brave.If the Israelis decide to enter Fordow from the ground, using special forces to destroy the centrifuge halls, what might that operation look like?

ChatGPT said:

A ground operation by Israeli special forces to enter and destroy Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) would be one of the most daring and logistically complex military operations in modern history. Fordow is built deep inside a mountain, near the city of Qom, and is one of Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear facilities. Here's what such an operation might involve, based on known capabilities and military doctrine:

🔍 Mission Objectives

• Infiltrate the Fordow site undetected.
  
• Access the underground centrifuge halls.
  
• Plant demolition charges to destroy or severely disable uranium enrichment capabilities.
  
• Exfiltrate the team safely, if possible.
  

🚧 Operational Challenges

1. Location & Fortification
   
   • Fordow is buried under 80–100 meters of rock.
     
   • Built to withstand aerial bombardment (deep-earth facility).
     
   • Surrounded by IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) troops and advanced surveillance.
     
   • Limited access roads and entrance points, which are likely booby-trapped or guarded.
     
2. Distance
   
   • ~1,000–1,500 km from Israel.
     
   • Surrounded by hostile territory.
     
   • Requires covert insertion and extraction, likely without access to nearby friendly bases.
     
3. Time on Target
   
   • High risk of detection; must move fast.
     
   • May need to neutralize security personnel and surveillance silently.
     

🪂 Possible Insertion Methods

1. Airborne Infiltration
   
   • C-130 or C-17 aircraft flying at low altitude, dropping Sayeret Matkal or Shayetet 13 via HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) parachute jumps.
     
   • Helicopter insertion (e.g., CH-53 Yasur or Sikorsky UH-60) if a nearby landing zone can be secured.
     
2. Overland Infiltration
   
   • Through Kurdish territory in northern Iraq (using Mossad or Kurdish contacts).
     
   • Disguised as Iranian military or civilians, using months of preparation and linguistic/cultural training.
     
3. Underground Sabotage
   
   • Unlikely but theoretically possible: a tunneling operation using robotics or mining equipment pre-positioned through sabotage teams or sympathetic locals.
     

💣 Attack Tactics

• Shaped charges to penetrate the centrifuge halls from access corridors.
  
• Use of thermobaric or specialized explosive devices to collapse or damage tunnel structures.
  
• Possibly include EMP devices to damage electronics and control systems.
  
• Plant time-delayed explosives to allow exfiltration before detonation.
  

🛡️ Deception & Diversion

• Simultaneous cyberattacks to disable alarms or communications.
  
• Decoy drone or missile attacks elsewhere in Iran (e.g., Natanz or Isfahan) to distract IRGC forces.
  
• Use of Iranian uniforms, fake documentation, and fake vehicles for deception.
  

🚁 Extraction Options

• Exfiltration via helicopter to a ship in the Gulf or a base in northern Iraq.
  
• Escape on foot to a safehouse for later pickup by air or land convoy.
  
• In some scenarios, the mission could be considered "no-return" – with operators sacrificing themselves or preparing for capture.
  

🪖 Likely Units Involved

• Sayeret Matkal – elite reconnaissance and counterterrorism unit.
  
• Shayetet 13 – naval commandos, comparable to SEAL Team 6.
  
• Mossad operatives – for local logistics, disguises, and intelligence.
  
• Cyber Units (Unit 8200) – for surveillance, hacking, jamming.
  

🧭 Historical Parallels

• Operation Entebbe (1976) – Israeli commandos flew 4,000 km to rescue hostages.
  
• Operation Orchard (2007) – secret airstrike on Syria’s nuclear reactor.
  
• Iran’s own assassination ops – e.g., targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists by Mossad-linked operatives inside Tehran.
  

🎯 Strategic Risk

• If caught or killed, operators could spark full-scale war.
  
• Would almost certainly be considered an act of war by Iran.
  
• Huge diplomatic fallout even from allies like the US or European nations.
  
• Extremely high political and military risk for Netanyahu or any Israeli PM.
  

💬 Bottom Line

A ground operation into Fordow would be feasible only under extreme conditions and with months or years of planning. It would require local assets, deception, cyber warfare, and elite special forces, and even then would face extraordinary risk. Israel is more likely to attempt sabotage or air-launched deep-penetration strikes using MOPs (Massive Ordnance Penetrators) if available, or covert means, than to risk a commando raid inside the mountain. But in a do-or-die scenario, such a raid can’t be entirely ruled out.

Would using a T12 cloud maker breech the weather modification treaties ?
The B52s can accurately drop them through a letterbox from way up high far above the flying carpets .

Further to Fordow scenarios. All this hysterical talk about radiological danger posed by bombing Fordow is rubbish.
If Uranium hexafluoride gas is released from bombed centrifuges and somehow manages to make its way to the surface, while very corrosive, it disperses within about 40 minutes on exposure to air.
If there is metallic HEU on site (suitable for pits in warheads) it's a radiological hazard requiring specialised equipment, shielding and handling to avoid danger to those in proximity.
So in summary, its not a case of loading a few nuggets of glowing HEU onto the back of a camel and disappearing into the desert to rendezvous with your terrorist mates, who can then disperse to all corners of the Middle East to build their own dirty bombs.
Grain of salt or two needed.

Radioactive material does not "disperse", at least to the extent that it becomes not radioactive by dilution. UF6 is a solid material at normal temp/pressure, though it's a vapor at 135ºF, so likely to sublimate in the Middle East. It's likely to form a dense radioactive dust that has a radiological half-life of 700M years. The main danger is from inhalation of dust or gas and results in lung and other cancers. The main product of U-235 fission is alpha particles which are easily stopped by thin materials. It's those alpha particles, basically helium nuclei, that are a danger for inhalation. They are like a short-range cannon that does damage by kinetic energy transfer, punching through the living cell walls in lung tissue and damaging DNA. The main hope (?) would be that the intensity of the radiation from spread of material would lower its effects below the normal background radiation.

The biggest limit to transport is to keep the concentrated mass below the critical mass; this mass depends on the amount of enrichment, but it looks like a 100 pound sphere is the limit for pure U-235; as UF6 that mass should be much larger with an atomic mass of around 350 vs plain U-235 of, yup, around 235 grams/mole. I don't know if fluorine is a neutron moderator.

At no point is U-235 "glowing." It's unlikely to even be warm. In a cloud chamber a reasonably small chunk will look interesting, but far below the activity of Americium that is used in home ionization detectors for fire alerting.

I recall reading a story of a physicist called in to look over a reactor complex storage facility who noted that while the individual buckets of material were sub-critical, the orderliness and packing on the facility floor were just about at the limit. Being really tidy can be a real problem.

If Iran was interested in dirty bombs they would have been packing this material onto warheads aimed at the Israeli defense manufacturing plants. Even "shot down" the material would continue on a ballistic path to spread on impact and leave the Israelis with an expensive cleanup. They would need dust filter masks and a decent washdown every working day for 1000 years if no other measures were taken to scoop all the dirt up and bury elsewhere.

Having read Tartare's Chat GPT detailed description of Israeli tactics to take Fordow (Mordor) in Post #2014, I wonder what the presumably now-prepared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would/will do under that same scenario, again according to Chat GPT or other AI analysis? (Assuming they do not simply drop weapons and vanish into the desert...)

It won't be long before the sciolists use ChatGPT or another AI tool for all their responses on these fora :cool:

At least tartare flagged it, I'm sure many others won't.

In answer to your question, even though I am not the authority on such things that Chat GPT is...:rolleyes:
1. Set up an ambush.
2. Position reserves to follow up on the ambush.
3. Parade the bodies of dead enemies through the streets of Tehran.

That's a plan, I am sure others can be dreamed up.

Haha... Now that's a realistic plan that does not smell stink of AI.

Yep. U-235 is actually not very radioactive, with a half life of approximately 700 million years. For reference, the shorter the half life the more radioactive emissions. For example, P-238 has a half life of about 88 years and is used in space craft for thermo-electric generators because of its heat of decay. P-239, used in weapons, has a half life of about 24,000 years. Not nice stuff, but atomic bomb pits were handled in open air back in the Los Alamos days; just don't breath the dust.

My reference to glowing was deeply sarcastic - a la Homer Simpson...

https://i1.wp.com/revealnews.org/wp-...um_caption.jpg
https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploa...jpg?quality=85
A pit.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....3510489913.jpg


UF6 sublimate at 56 degrees Celsius.

Iran
 

The news says that Trump has approved the attack plans for the Fordo plant but he is just waiting to see if Iran wish to surrender first.

I am left wondering if he is actually waiting to see if Tom Cruise is available to lead the strike package and if all the F-14s have in fact been destroyed. After all many other elements of the news seem to emulate the movie in a classic case of life imitating art.

BV

So is the ancient Chinese paradox to be tested once more? A ‘sword-shield’ situation. 矛盾, = a sword/shield, contradiction in terms, or paradox. The biggest bunker buster in the world, against the deepest bunker.
Mr P will surely be awake and watching.

There's a good chance the MOP's won't go deep enough as the IAEA says the most sensitive areas, which they claim to have
visited, are half a mile underground.

Only one way to find out.

Ship one drops MOP1, and then MOP2 directly on the impact site.
Ship two drops MOP3 on MOP2 impact site and MOP4 on MPO 3 impact site.

Definitely needs Tom Cruise on the job

I don’t think they use chat gpt for mission planning . Icons give it away . What about the space laser while we are at it ?

Nuclear Facilities
 

Israel has attacked the Arak nuclear site.

https://vcdnp.org/wp-content/uploads...facilities.pdf

I think Israel is starting to heavily flirt with the grey areas here. After all, we weren’t happy when Russia did it recently.

As someone who is currently downwind I have to say I’m not a big fan.

BV

Or, the plan for the erks...
1. Salute officers enthusiastically
2. Send visa application to US, UK, France, Germany, China, anywhere, pleading persecution
3. Adjourn to pub (OK, chaikhaneh) to await results of visa application
4. Learn Yiddish

© not ChatGPT

UK perspective - squeaky bum time on what to do if Trump asks for UK help and/or use of Diego Garcia.

Tim Shipman article in the Spectator followed by today’s Politico London Playbook.

https://archive.ph/apdVG

Starmer’s war zone: the Prime Minister is in a perilous position

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/l...om-the-bunker/

No news from the bunker

I guess that’s one of the reasons you get the big bucks for working in that rejoin..

Here's a rejoinder to that. :) Can't anyone write anymore without AI or autocorrect?

I did briefly contemplate that I might be inadvertently breaching Israeli Opsec.
Oops - there's a man in black at the door with a Hebrew accent...

Or 633 Squadron.

(Mozzie; the original stealth bomber).

……………

isw:

IAEA has information the Khondab (former Arak) heavy water research reactor, under construction, was hit. It was not operational and contained no nuclear material, so no radiological effects.

At present, IAEA has no information indicating the Khondab heavy water plant was hit.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-st...r-development/

Reactor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclea...s_in_Iran#Arak

Heavy water plant: https://www.nti.org/education-center...on-plant-hwpp/

Brilliant!

Not sure what point you are trying to make - they are two different buildings with different purposes, I provided links describing both - they IAEA confirm the first was attacked, they have no information on the second.

Agreed, many pawning it or other's work as their own thoughts on the topic.