The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has fired a general whose agency's initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes angered Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official…
The Republican US president, who had pronounced the Iranian program "completely and fully obliterated", rejected the report…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/22/hegseth-fires-general-jeffrey-kruse
Analysts have long argued that while it is possible to disrupt the physical function of a nuclear facility and limit the scope of a programme through, for example, the killing of scientists, the breadth of technical knowledge acquired during the decades-long programme is impossible to destroy.
Ultimately, the question is whether the US-Israeli attacks are seen as sufficient for Iran to capitulate, or whether they instead encourage the regime to accelerate its efforts to produce a viable nuclear weapon...
