And has the same issue with dilution, and is even more boring because there are much cheaper things with more chemical toxicity than uranium too, like lead.

It isn’t any more toxic than lead, which this bomb probably was filled with.

Yeah, my point is there are much better options that would also induce fear and actually be effective. Fentanyl strapped to an explosive, or any of a ton of other chemical agents. Iran would do far more damage -- and create a deep source of fear that would likely have lingering consequences for decades -- by giving their HEU away rather than making an ineffective dirty bomb. There is no way anybody who knows what they had would use it that way. Even the most fanatical member of the Iranian regime understands what to do with the material better than that.

While true, the problem is it wouldn't meaningfully change the security situation for Iran.

Deliverable nuclear weapons make you invasion proof - nobody wants to risk it. A "dirty bomb" isn't something that can come flying in on an ICBM and eliminate large chunks of your nation - the threat of it is more likely to enhance aggression rather then deter it.

You start with natural uranium, which has .72% U-235. Getting from that to 20% is _hard_. You need large cascades of centrifuges to do this because it's only .72%, so each stage gets you just a wee bit more enriched. You do this over and over and over again until you get to higher enrichment. Once you have HEU enriching further is very easy for the same reason that it was hard when it was unenriched: now the stuff you don't want (U-238) is much less. To get from 80% HEU to 96% is trivial using the same centrifuge cascades, and how long it takes really depends on a) how much 80% HEU you have, and b) how much 96% HEU you want. If you have 100lbs of 80% HEU then to get to 10lbs of 96% HEU might really only take weeks if not less when it might have taken years to get from .72% to 80%.

You know how Shannon entropy works in CS, compression and stuff? Atoms work the same way: their mixing entropy is that same x*ln(x) sum which is an extremely steep function near its boundaries. That's your non-linearity. That statistical entropy corresponds to macroscopic thermodynamic properties, enthalpy and work. The starting uranium atom ratios, 0.7%/99.3%, are a very unbalanced mixture deep into that non-linearity side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_of_mixing

(The other half of it is that, as you progressively enrich, you start to discard the "depleted" part of the mass flow, and work only with the, gradually smaller, "enriched" mass flow).

Israel doesn't talk about destroying Gaza, it just does it.

> Iran repeatedly calls for death to Israel and the USA. Israel never did that.

Calling for it and being actually able to do it are two very different things.

It is similar to swearing at someone "Fuck you". It doesn't mean you're actually able and willing to.

If they can even get back in

The kinetics matter here. The B2 flies much higher than the C-130 which would aid the GBU-57 MOP (almost certainly used here) in it's ability to penetrate to maximum depth. 80% of the 15 ton weight of that bomb is just heavy metal to give it maximum energy as it borrows into the ground.

Also, each B2 can carry 2 MOPs making it a better platform than a C-130, and that isn't even taking the stealth of the platform into account

Don't think the C-130s can fly high enough with a single 30,000lb bomb. The graphic at bbc site show it would be dropped from about 12km (~40,000 ft) in order to gain the speed needed to drive it some 60m underground.

Various sources are saying 6 to 12 of these bombs were used. So, you'd need a lot of C-130s and those planes are too slow to NOT get shot down.

Do they even have access to this variant? I thought they had access to the older ones that weren't as advanced.

Israel hasn’t degraded Iranian air defenses that much. The stuff that can’t threaten a F-35 can still trouble a C-130.

Israel doesn't have access to the MOP.

they might be right, but that's why the attack failed and why there's a risk what I said might still come true

i was listening to Al Jazeera, one of the DC flaks they interviewed gave an upper estimate of the facility depth as 1000 ft. The conventional device can go to something like 60m or 200 ft. 6 devices were dropped, they would have to have everything, including geology with repeated strikes on the same point, be perfect to get past 1000 feet, and then they probably would not destroy the whole facility. As far as I know, they don't even have a good map of the layout.

hence, the only real option is a nuclear weapon. this is absolutely being considered inside the pentagon. our government is psychotic. a 1 kt nuclear weapon (laughably small, hiroshima was 15 kt) is 73x more powerful than a 30,000 lb bomb. they would be like, well, it's an underground explosion! The world will forgive us. it's so crafty and smart to use a nuke to stop a nuke (that doesn't exist).

https://x.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1935741526191100181

"The effectiveness of GBU-57s has been a topic of deep contention at the Pentagon since the start of Trump’s term, according to two defense officials who were briefed that perhaps only a tactical nuclear weapon could be capable of destroying Fordow because of how deeply it is located."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/trump-caution-...