Rapid Response 47
@RapidResponse47

.@PressSec shares a message from President Trump: "Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks."

Trump doesn't want to alienate the minority of his base that has gone full Code Pink, so he wants to delay making a decision. There are several things that could happen that could make it unnecessary for him to decide at all, thus allowing him to skate past this political headache suffering no damage at all.

First, the Iranian regime could actually agree to "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER," at least as far as their nuke programs. As the situation gets worse for them, they might well go back on their vow to never, ever give up their nuke program. They might agree to denucularization and the UN's atomic energy regulators could be allowed to come in and take all the enriched uranium and the enrichment equipment away.

Second, the Iranian regime could collapse. In which case, a deal might be reached with the successor government to evacuate nuclear materials out of Iran.

Third, Israel might just take care of this all themselves and spare Trump the bother of having to give a controversial order. While Israeli planes are far too small to carry the 30,000 pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator that is designed to take out very hardened underground bunkers, they could airdrop in commandos armed with huge amounts of explosives to physically carry them into Fodrow and set the charges on the walls of the place.

Also, as David Strom suggests, while the Israelis don't have any warplanes that can carry a 30,000 pound munition, they do have C-130 cargo planes, and such massive cargo lifters have been used to drop ordnance in the past.

He links this article suggesting that Israeli C-130s could drop the MOP.

There is certainly a precedent for C-130s dropping absolutely massive bombs out of their cargo holds, both old and new. The BLU-82 Daisy Cutter was dropped by C-130, primarily to clear landing zones, during the Vietnam War. A modernized fuel-air weapon known as the GBU-43 Mother Of All Bombs (MOAB) is in service today, and it was used with devastating results in Afghanistan in 2017. So why not a super-heavy penetrator?

Dropping a weapon weighing nearly 30,000 pounds out the back of a C-130 would certainly be something to behold. The MOAB clocks in at nearly a third lighter than MOP. Still, MOP or a similar weapon could be designed to maximize the C-130's airdrop envelope and not exceed it, and should have no problem fitting inside of and being released by a C-130.

The problem is that the C-130 is the opposite of stealthy, and would not survive an attempt to deliver the bomb if Iran could get its air defense missiles to lock on it.

But do they have many of those left? Israel has focused on taking out Iran's air defense grid since the first seconds of the war, and they continue taking them out. Can they degrade those capabilities so much that a big fat clumsy C-130 can fly in without being attacked?