Tehran's air defenses fired for the better part of an hour overnight with no strike on the capital ever confirmed, while the night's wave hit the usual south plus Tabriz and Khuzestan.
Retired Major General Randy Manner offered his hypothesis for the mystery: drones over the capital, sent to make the defenses light up and reveal themselves to satellites, mapping Tehran for a strike that has not come yet.
Then he took apart the Pickaxe debate.
Trump says the area gets hit "probably pretty soon," and the argument rages over whether even a tactical nuke could crack something buried that deep.
Wrong question, in his telling.
Deep underground fortresses are 1950s TECHNOLOGY, built for an era of inaccurate nukes and 90 day sealed survival, and nobody needs to touch the vault: destroy the entrances, the power, the water and the air supply with ordinary long range missiles, repeat every few months, and the facility underneath dies.
He also ran the war's bill through a career of costing deployments: the official $37.5 billion is off by two or three times, with the real number between $80 and $120 billion once destroyed equipment and spent munitions are counted honestly.
His forecast for the next four to five days is a sharply increased probability of heavier attacks.
His hope, offered just as plainly: somebody finds the exit first.
