I was surprised, United States President Donal Trump stated that the Iranian nuclear program was obliterated during Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025. Donald Trump is not famous for making factually correct media statements though, considering a nuclear development program was obliterated just over eight months ago, this is an amazing rapid rebuild.

The planning and execution of Operation Midnight Hammer was impressive, there is no doubting the preparation and execution of the US military. They have war plans developed, the US military has reach throughout the world, even though the B-2 is based in the United States, refueling aircraft and escorts are needed, they used the F-35 fighter jets in the raid. Naturally, everyone knew Donald Trump was lying, he never gives factual information. Only the truly MAGA faithful will believe what Donald is selling. So, where does this leave us?

The first week of the Iranian offensive saw an amazing volume of munitions deployed. The Finnish President Alexander Stubb estimated the air defence operations cost $40 billion USD. Ironically, this is more than the entire European spending on Ukrainian defences in an entire year. What we have learned is this is costing the United States big dollars, they are using expensive weapons to shoot down cheap Iranian drones. Iran has been firing missiles and drones in all directions, they have hit neighbours and even had a crack at Turkey and Cyprus, the gulf nations are feeling the pain.

It would appear that Israel really pushed this action, this is pretty much a bilateral operation between Israel and the United States. The initial raid was impressive, the intelligence to take out the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei in his bunker. The operation to assassinate Ali Khamenei was impressive, whilst we will unlikely to exactly learn how he was assassinated in the short term, we expect it was a combination of human sources, cyber warfare, and intelligence gathering.

What we have learned is Israel hacked the Tehran traffic camera network to track bodyguards. Mossad was able to build files on Khamenei’s bodyguards, they knew their work schedule, and schedules. The Israeli operation to plan and execute the bunker buster bombing of the Iranian leadership, this is a positive for the Iranian population, they are living under hard and hostile conditions. Hopefully the Iranian people will eventually be liberated from the theocracy.