(Lack of) US Iran Peace Agreement Part 5

[OnePeppyFatball]

Part 5

For some reason that post has posted twice.

Yeah, so it is carried in a Hercules plane. And to fly that into a hostile country they would need to clear anything that looks like anti aircraft. And that would need the precision munitions/ missiles, that the US do not have.

For the likes of pickaxe, the B2 Stealth Bomber is the way to go. It's what it was designed for after all. A loaded up B52 would be better than a MOAB. Much safer for the crew as well. A Hercules could be like a sitting duck in that environment.

This just goes to show Trump is a showman who is not listening to his Military. There is a reason the MOAB has not been used (Apart from Trump in an empty part of Afghanistan). Because it was done as a "nice to have just in case". But there has been no case where it was needed.

That is a big ask for a Hercules crew to drop that. It's not fast, and it can't go high because the hold is unpressurised when dropping.

The MOAB might be useful to prepare the ground for a special services incursion.

Equally, they could use that in tandem with a MOP to actually penetrate the granite.

However, realistically, I sometimes think this kind of leak is just there to pressurise the Iranians into negotiating.

Surely, if they really wanted to go back to kinetic war, they would try and keep an element of surprise.

Quote "The MOAB might be useful to prepare the ground for a special services incursion."

Has it ever been used for this before ? There is also the Monte Cassino lesson from history.

@RedTagAlan ,

‘Has it ever been used for this before ? There is also the Monte Cassino lesson from history’

I think it was only ever used once in the caves of Torah Borah. It seemed to be somewhat successful.

When It Was Used
Date: April 13, 2017 1]
Target: An ISIS-K (Islamic State – Khorasan Province) 300-meter deep-cave and tunnel complex, bunkers, and weapon caches. 1, 2]
Delivery: Dropped from an MC-130 cargo plane. 1, 2]
Development Context: Developed in 2003 (initially intended for the Iraq War), it sat unused in the U.S. arsenal for 14 years until authorized by President Donald Trump. 1, 2, 3, 4]
Was It Successful?
Tactical Objectives: U.S. and Afghan commanders deemed the mission successful because it cleared dense minefields, destroyed three underground tunnels, and removed major obstacles to allow ground forces to continue their offensive. 1, 2, 3, 4]

That was 2017. Trumps first term. Afghanistan was occupied by the US then.

Here is what you said that I was replying to.

Quote "The MOAB might be useful to prepare the ground for a special services incursion."

Has a MOAB ever been used for that ? You know, to prepare the way for special forces making an incursion. And it goes without saying, an incursion deep into enemy territory, likely by chopper or Osprey.

What you have posted is an example where one army, in near full control of a country, used it against a pocket of resistance. As in, the US Army were sat on one hill, and wanted the strike against the hill across the valley.

Honestly, I am not seeing anything good about AI with these answers :-)

The Monte Cassino reference is about how destruction can cause issues to a military objective. It confuses/changes the area and gives the enemy new places to take cover. So, if you want to send special forces into a known area to retrieve something, what you really do not want to do is to change how the area looks, moments before your forces arrive. Because then they get there will have even less chance of finding what they are looking for.

Be nice @RedTagAlan . AI is useful for gathering info, but then the next step is stress testing the info. Anyhoo, I now know more about MOABs so that's a win for me.

I simply thought one would be as useful as a chocolate teapot against a granite mountain. I might have more than a passing acquaintance with granite.

Info on granite blocks used by Iran.

MOP
This is substantially larger than the deepest penetrating bunker busters previously available, the 5,000-pound (2,300 kg) GBU-28 and GBU-37.
In 2012, the Pentagon requested $82 million to develop greater penetration power for the existing weapon. A 2013 report stated that the development had been a success, and B-2 integration testing began that year.
The bomb can penetrate 200 feet of 5000 psi hardened concrete and is accurate enough for multiple hits on the same location to penetrate deeper targets or targets with even stronger concrete. One GBUJ-57A/B can only penetrate 8 meters of 10,000 psi rock or concrete. This could drop to 2 meters of 30,000 psi material.
Rock of over 10,000 psi is considered hard. The strongest granite is about 30,000 psi. In 2007, the University of Tehran made several concrete cubes between 50,000 to 60,000 psi, and possible stronger. The aggregate to be made from quartz, and had some steel fibers in the mix.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/05/a-hundred-super-ground-penetrator-bombs.html

Or perhaps they're saying MOABS to the normies to conceal use of a Nuke? People like Larry Johnson, Tucker Carlson, Trump’s former lawyer Robert Barnes have said that Trump was briefed on a nuclear option. MTG leaked it in August:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/state/georgia/2026/08/17/marjorie-taylor-greene-claims-trump-considering-using-nukes-in-iran/91334646007/
"In a post on X Sunday, Greene said the Trump Administration was "discussing using nuclear weapons on Iran" during recent strategy meetings.
"Yes you read that correctly. It's real. I'm not speculating, I know," Greene said. "And it's pure evil."

Aka Strike an underground Nuclear site in Iran, blame any increased radiation readings on leaking from the site, boast about how America has the biggest and best bombs.

Remember these people are the same political class that (with reckless disregard for even their own soldiers):

> Said that agent orange was safe
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/southeast-asia/vietnam-war-agent-orange-effects-50-years-b2741425.html

> Still won't investigate depleted uranium after effects:
https://nuclear-news.net/2023/04/03/b1-army-putting-outrageous-spin-on-depleted-uranium-science/

> Used AI to target and double tap a school in Iran.

> Kidnapped* *the sitting leader of a sovereign country.

And so much more.

Trump is just over 2 weeks from perhaps seeing the biggest Republican defeat in decades during the midterms. That means he and a lot of people around him could face prosecution for corruption and other crimes. This is Don Jr's former girlfriend (and soon former US ambassador to Greece).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr5ynplvpg7lo

Given the investigative journalists around, it is mind blowing that anyone in the WH Regime could be so devious as to suggest this ⬆ But they're in power atm and rewriting history every day.

The only good thing is that there are patriotic Americans willing to and risking a lot to leak information.

Ironically with the increasing use of AI to summarise results, if a government has the cash they can easily game "results", so what is real? 1984 lol.

This article about Israel trended last month, however there are numerous companies like this funded by different governments (and rich companies/folk) around the World.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/26/fake-thinktank-israel-ai-propaganda

Quote "Or perhaps they're saying MOABS to the normies to conceal use of a Nuke? People like Larry Johnson, Tucker Carlson, Trump’s former lawyer Robert Barnes have said that Trump was briefed on a nuclear option. MTG leaked it in August:"

Different types of radiation.

Uranium emits Beta radiation, an atomic blast emits gamma.
Then there is the EMP that happens at detonation, as well as the other elements and isotopes that come from the fission. Recall back to when the DPRK were doing their underground tests. Aircraft can till detect particles in the air, and boffins can even estimate out the yield etc. Then there are the different types of shockwaves the earthquake detectors pick up.

Article here about pre nuke steel. If an alien space craft landed tomorrow, they can quickly work out if we are pre or post nuke era. And even when we started detonation them.

What is pre-war steel, and why are people stealing it? (interestingengineering.com)

It's best not to think about operation ploughshare that the Americans wanted to do. Shiver.

I am not anti AI, not at all. It's a great tool.

I think my limited internet plays a part in how I view it in many applications TBH. Because while many of the sources referenced in an AI reply footnotes are blocked for me, I do often get the address of the site. And I if I was composing a MN post, they are not sites I would use to try to get a point across. Because you know somebody will come back and say " And you believe that website ?"

I had an AI argument presented to me recently, and checking what sites it referenced, it included facebook. And it reminded me of discussions with Reform voters when they present their evidence for a claim, eventually.

I am wrong on so many things. But I prefer to be wrong because of my own ignorance or misinterpretation of facts. Not because of what was posted on facebook.

I suppose it comes down to when we post a link as evidence for a point, we highlight what text supports our point. But we usually also scan through to see if there is any text that contradicts it, and also of course, is the source likely to be accepted as factual. That last bit, AI does not seem to be very good at.

I do not know much about rocks. And the terminology used by the military confuses me. Metals are my thing, in engineering terms.

This link you posted for example, "Rock of over 10,000 psi is considered hard.", the link opens ok but paywall. But hardness is not strength. It's a form of strength, but not the whole picture.

And this in into my ignorance territory, because metals etc for engineering are measured for tensile strength. But rocks are used in compressive tasks. I don't know much on compression of rocks. Done a bit on ceramics though.

I checked how rock harness is measured anyway -

10.62051-ijmee.v7n3.04.pdf

That article is - "Methods and Instruments for Measuring Rock Hardness , Journal of Mech and E Eng". And rock hardness is measured the same as metals. The scales and methods used are Mohs, Shore, Brinell and Vickers. Same as I am familiar with.

That link from "The next big future" opens, and now I am even more confused. Lines like this : "The bomb can penetrate 200 feet of 5000 psi hardened concrete." . I am confused because PSI is not a measure of harness, In concrete ( I had to look it up), PSI is a measure of its compressive strength.

I wish America would get with it by the way, and use METRIC. They should use SI units same as the rest of the world. Ah wait, Trump decided SI means something different now, so that confuses things.

Anyway, hardness and strength are not the same thing. Indeed, hard things tend to be brittle. Glass is hard for example, but brittle.

Also from that article you linked.

"Ultra-high-performance concrete is a new type of concrete that is being developed by agencies concerned with infrastructure protection. UHPC is characterized by being a steel fibre-reinforced cement composite material with compressive strengths in excess of 150 MPa (21750 psi), up to and possibly exceeding 250 MPa (36250 psi). UHPC is also characterized by its constituent material make-up: typically fine-grained sand, silica fume, small steel fibers, and special blends of high-strength Portland cement. Note that there is no large aggregate. The current types in production (Ductal, Taktl, etc.) differ from normal concrete in compression by their strain hardening, followed by sudden brittle failure. Ongoing research into UHPC failure via tensile and shear failure is being conducted by multiple government agencies and universities around the world."

Now I am starting to think I will never understand bunker busting bombs.

Hardness matters for the initial penetration. And granite has a Mohs hardness of 6-7. Quartz will scratch it, so it. As will a steel nail according to a site I looked up. But no mention of if the nail is hardened. Getting more confused now. But what happens after the penetration. See the line above.

" The current types in production (Ductal, Taktl, etc.) differ from normal concrete in compression by their strain hardening, followed by sudden brittle failure."

Yup. Hard things shatter. So these "super concretes" are getting their strength from having included fibers, that are in there to stop crack propagation. And this all leads to toughness.

And toughness is a strange one. That gets into the world of Izod impact testing. Because we can measure and quantify hardness, tensile strength and compressive strength, but toughness is a tough one to quantify. So the IZOD test is used. And the units used for that are Joules per meter squared. It's more of a guide, and really the only way of testing how tough something is to physically smash it.

Sorry for the long ramble. Interesting to look into granite.

Anyway, that is my reasoning that leads me to my conclusion. That the only way to know how effective a bunker buster is, is to test it, against the target, or something very similar.

And this then goes into geology. Some I am not hot on. Because a mountain formation is really a laminate of different rock layers. So even if a bunker buster works well against an Arizona mountain, it might not work against an Iranian mountain.

I am sure Trump has been through all this with his tech people. Or did he sack them all ?

You know my 'be nice' was tongue in cheek!😁

On the granite thing, I know that it generates radiation as where I live has a higher than normal problem of children with cancer, attributed to living in granite surroundings etc, so I had flirted at the thought of bombing Pickaxe, but when finding nothing there (ok there's a zero chance of that) then using the combined radiation of the granite plus the bomb to claim that Iran had stored nuclear material there.

So thank you for the explanation about the different types of rays. Even if my imaginary scenario happened, Magats will still believe the fake news.

Ha ha. Anyway, the bad news is I am looking into bunker busters now.

So, the MOAB is not a bunker buster. But as you posted above, quote,

"MOP
This is substantially larger than the deepest penetrating bunker busters previously available, the 5,000-pound (2,300 kg) GBU-28 and GBU-37."

This article I found.

GBU-57 MOP: The World’s Most Powerful Bunker Buster Bomb (defensefeeds.com)

Has this line " By the late 2010s, the U.S. had produced roughly 20 of these powerful munitions, making them rare, highly specialized tools reserved for the most sensitive military operations."

No idea if true or not. But if these things need to be dropped one after the other to get deeper and deeper, it comes down to the ammo count thing again. And looking at Pickaxe mountain -

Pickaxe Mountain: What to know about Iran nuclear facility Trump may strike (cnbc.com)

I am wondering if they have enough bombs to get to the depth they need to penetrate to. Now I am thinking back to WW2 and Barnes Wallace doing his bunker busting bombs, his "Tall Boys" and "Grand Slams".

The Tallboy and Grand Slam Earthquake Bombs - More of Barnes Wallis' Crazy Inventions | War History Online

But that is concrete. Not mountain.

With that info, I reckon the reason Trump has not bombed Pickaxe is because he can't. Not enough bombs, and mountain too deep. Physics has limits.

FWIW, uranium 235 actually decays via alpha decay with associated weak gamma emission.

With uranium fission, you get a load of different isotopes produced (not always the same one), most of which will then decay further via alpha or beta. Of course, it also produces very high energy gamma.

I don’t think destroying the uranium with a bomb is necessarily possible. Obviously a nuke might destroy it and, even if it doesn’t, the area won’t be accessible for quite some time, but I think Trump using a nuke in Iran is fanciful (to put things mildly).

However, any large bomb will destroy the surface infrastructure around it, kill any people in the vicinity and seal the entrances. That would make the uranium inaccessible for months or years, and can be repeated as many times as necessary.

But is that really the game now? Both sides seem to me to be using brinkmanship to try and improve their negotiating position. Of course, sometimes in brinkmanship, you go over the brink. Both sides, however, have a lot to lose if they return to war.

What is the game about now ?

I think same as it always has been. Make Trump look good.

I think he was persuaded by Netanyahu to bomb the meeting of Iranian leaders. He expected the whole thing to collapse, to give him another VZ. That he thought a new Iranian leader would be put in place, and that new leader would give him all the Iranian oil, same as VZ.

I also think the CIA played a hand in the protests. But that in no way excuses the Iranian Government reaction.

But Trump got it all wrong as usual, because he is chronic liar who believes his own lies. He thinks he is a messiah, and he has surrounded himself with ultra sycophants. Including a Christian Nationalist Sec of War who is stoked up on testosterone/ steroids. He and his "team" have sacked most people who know what they are doing, and replaced them with people who tell management what they want to hear.

Not at all like a film with Morgan Freeman playing POTUS. Nope, more like Dukes of Hazard with Trump playing Boss Hogg, and a band of Republican donor class competing with each other to be is Cletus.

@RedTagAlan ,

Fundamentally, I agree with everything you wrote in your last post.

The game was about reshaping the Middle East to suit the U.S and Israel. Now, the game is about securing an honourable (well, not humiliating at least) exit from the quagmire the U.S find themselves in.

Both sides are pretty desperate, so it will either be a quicker than expected negotiated solution or an all out gloves off fight which could precipitate a global recession.

On a slightly different note, several posters on here seem to think that it is possible that Trump might use a nuke on Pickaxe mountain.

Personally, I think this is virtually impossible even if he has been briefed on it. If I were POTUS, I would want to be briefed on all my options, including nukes, but that wouldn’t mean that I would consider using one, especially when my advisors told me of all the ramifications.

But, just as an exercise, I tried to imagine what would happen were Trump to drop a nuke. It goes without saying that the world would go into shock and markets would (at least temporarily) collapse. But what of Russia? Would Putin use a couple of tactical nukes in Ukraine to break the stalemate? Trump could no longer go wild.

I assume it would be a ground burst, with a very limited EMP, but it would still be easy to detect a nuclear detonation from the isotopes spread by the wind.

And finally, what about China? I still think that they would react only with words. It would be carte Blanche to take Taiwan, but I don’t think they are ready to do that.

Ultimately, Trump has little to gain and a lot to lose from dropping a nuke.

Could Israel do it? They at least have a more convincing reason of what might be (eventually) a genuine existential threat, as opposed to Hamas or Hezbollah. That would actually help Trump with his war and give him an honourable out. Israel would lose some of her new Middle Eastern allies (but maybe not all), but they may feel that a price worth paying.

However, I think it would be awfully ironic, in the context of what Israel is and why she was created, for the Jewish state to be the first to use a nuke in 80+ years in anger. I suspect public opinion wouldn’t stand it.

So, I guess I see no chance of Trump using a nuke but maybe a tiny (1%) chance of Israel using one as part of a broader attack on Iran.

Well straight from the horses mouth:

“It’s going to end very soon, as soon as I want it to end, it will end,” said the president.

Maybe he will drop a nuke in the middle of nowhere. He’s one crazy fool.

If Israel do it all hell will break loose.

On a slightly different note, several posters on here seem to think that it is possible that Trump might use a nuke on Pickaxe mountain.

Huh? My impression is that ALL posters so far have been saying how unrealistic it is, not least because it wouldn't have the effect Trump thinks it might. So Trump bluster as usual.

@trumpredcard

‘Huh? My impression is that ALL posters so far have been saying how unrealistic it is, not least because it wouldn't have the effect Trump thinks it might. So Trump bluster as usual.’

That’s a strange comment! You can find below two instances of people suggesting a nuke, just in the last couple of days. If you go through the thread, there are loads more.

‘Or perhaps they're saying MOABS to the normies to conceal use of a Nuke? People like Larry Johnson, Tucker Carlson, Trump’s former lawyer Robert Barnes have said that Trump was briefed on a nuclear option. MTG leaked it in August:
https’

‘Maybe he will drop a nuke in the middle of nowhere. He’s one crazy fool.’

Well @Newbutoldfather we can agree to disagree. I read the same posts as more about how stupid crazy Trump is, and speculative on the possibility that he would consider such a move. Yes, he would think this, but would he really carry it out, iyswim.

I should also say that I agree with you on the brinkmanship, and I'm optimistic that an agreement will soon be reached. Because it will be completely irrational for it not to be so.

Reuters:

“The US president said there was no need to use a nuclear bomb in Iran. "I wouldn't use nuclear. We don't have to."

• Trump reiterated he was not considering using US ground troops in Iran
• Trump did not say if he had authorized the use of GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, also known as the "mother of all bombs," against Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites. He did say the MOAB bomb was not a nuclear bomb.”

Excerpt From
“Trump says US may need to strike Iran's Pickaxe Mountain”
Reuters
Reuters
https://apple.news/Amw9OtIBtQwCzjN4dXYLAxQ
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