re: #334 Killgore Trout

The Iranians are saying that they’ll further secure their enrichment facilities, including moving them to more secure locations.

That’s a pretty telling statement IMO. That’s an admission that they know that the US and/or Israel knows the whereabouts of their nuclear infrastructure, and that either/both has the means to disrupt or take out those facilities with existing weapons systems.

It’s possible that the RQ-170 incident may have revealed that the US has technical sophistication far beyond anything the Iranians expected, and that it might have gathered information sufficient to target the Iranian nuclear facilities (though I think the real mission for the RQ-170, including the one that crashed into Iranian territory was plotting targets for interdicting border trades between Iran and Afghanistan supplying the Taliban as well as keeping tabs on Iranian military actions generally).

So, while the loss of the RQ-170 in Iranian hands was a generally bad thing, it might lead Iran to make some unforced errors of its own - like moving its nuclear infrastructure, which is pretty tough to do under optimal conditions. It’s not like you can hide building bunkers and moving equipment all that easily (that’s what JSTARS is for).