Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Ryan Bridge: Were the US strikes on Iran really a success?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: So we now know. The Americans used seven B two
- 0:03Speaker 1: stealth bombers to attack Iran. A dozen bunker buster bombs
- 0:07Speaker 1: were used. They flew in the dark at night, dropping
- 0:10Speaker 1: the payload just after two am local time. They fired
- 0:13Speaker 1: Tomahawk missiles from US Navy ships nearby. They call it
- 0:17Speaker 1: Operation Midnight Hammer. They claimed it was successful, But what
- 0:22Speaker 1: we don't actually know is how successful and what success
- 0:26Speaker 1: actually means. Satellite images don't show you what's happening underground. Obviously,
- 0:32Speaker 1: the bunker buster bombs are designed to blow stuff up
- 0:35Speaker 1: around sixty meters underground. Nobody but the Iranians know exactly
- 0:39Speaker 1: how deep their enrichment facilities are hidden. Nobody knows how
- 0:43Speaker 1: thick the concrete is that they put on top of it.
- 0:46Speaker 1: It's possible that the main guts of their facilities haven't
- 0:50Speaker 1: been hit at all. Then you ask, what does success
- 0:54Speaker 1: mean If success is destroying Iran's nuclear capability, Well, that
- 0:58Speaker 1: hasn't happened. Just were taken out in Israel's first strikes,
- 1:02Speaker 1: but not all of them. Iran has very smart people
- 1:05Speaker 1: with knowledge of nuclear weapons and enrichment. China sends them
- 1:09Speaker 1: the uranium. This strike will have set them back but
- 1:12Speaker 1: this is a country who's shown time and again not
- 1:15Speaker 1: just how capable they are, but how determined they are
- 1:19Speaker 1: to have nuclear weapons. To be a nuclear state doesn't
- 1:22Speaker 1: mean the strike wasn't worth it, of course, if they
- 1:26Speaker 1: won't negotiate, but also success depends on how you define it.
- 1:32Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
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