I think the only US military response under serious consideration is a B2 strike on Fordow, in and out.
this should not be under serious consideration, and it's a horrible idea. not hard to see why. just game it out.
Pentagon already knows and has known for decades that the US
does not have escalation dominance with Iran if it were to preemptively attack Iran with air strikes- wholly unprovoked I might add. Pentagon already knows and has known that it's B2 bunker buster bombs
will not completely destroy Fordow- they would have to use a tactical nuke to do that- the fact alone should make all of this a complete non-starter.
Imagine that for a second if you will- actually using a nuke to aggressively attack another country wholly unprovoked to make sure said country that
does not have a nuke will not get a nuke. JFC my head hurts.
Say the US attacks Iran with bunker busters (can't imagine a tactical nuke would actually be used here, praying for humanity at least)- all that will happen is that the US won't completely destroy Fordow- and it may set their enrichment program back for months or years- but all it will have done in the process by that action is strengthen Iran's resolve and incentivize them to the nth degree to actually start a nuclear weapons program- which by the way they haven't yet- as all US intelligence says.
US bombs them- they immediately kick out every inspector- stop letting IAEA and UN in at all- they completely withdrawal from the NPT & JCPOA (which they are still technically in- and while it's true they have violated JCPOA by going to 60% enrichment- they ONLY did so AFTER the Imbecile-in-Chief "Master Negotiator" Trump withdrew the US from it in 2018 and put back on crushing crippling US sanctions.
People saying we should "just air strike- in and out" have not thought this out all the way through. It ain't that clean and copacetic. The US is currently occupying a 1/3rd of Syria and has around 2,000 military personnel stationed there. The US still has around 2,500 military personnel in neighboring Iraq, around 9,000 in Bahrain, around 3,000 in Saudi Arabia, around 10,000 in Qatar, around 5,000 in UAE. Iran will assuredly retaliate if they are attacked- as every nation that gets attacked has a right to defend itself and respond to aggression from a hostile foreign power. And make no mistake- this would flat out be outright aggression from the United States. This will likely lead to American bases being hit and US soldiers being maimed or killed and the pressure will be on from the neo-cons like you would not believe for Trump to respond in full force and hit back. Then they hit us back- then we hit them back- and it has the very real and dangerous potential to explode into all-out war.
