저자: Kevin · 외국인
요약 보기
미국의 이란 핵시설(에스파한·나탄즈·포르도) 공습 소식을 전하며, 협상 실패 후 전개될 시나리오(최선·차선·최악)를 설명. 공습 성공 여부는 불확실하다고 봄. 협상 타결 실패 시 유가 100~125달러 상승, 호르무즈 해협 봉쇄 가능성, 경기침체 우려 제기. 비트코인은 약 101(지지선 102 하회)로 부정적 반응.
다듬은 글
It's official. Donald Trump just struck Iran. Three nuclear sites have been hit: Esfahan, Natanz, and Fordow. Donald Trump says all American aircraft are now in safe space outside Iranian airspace. Based on what we've seen over the last few days, I didn't expect Trump to announce these strikes ahead of time, since doing so would have put the American mission at risk.
It appears the mission is now complete. What's very interesting is that these are facilities that the Israelis had already struck, in some cases multiple times. Natanz has been hit repeatedly since almost the first day of this incursion. It's one of the main uranium enrichment sites.
Esfahan is also an enrichment site, but what makes it unique is that it's a storage facility for enriched uranium. At least that's where it was last seen by IAEA inspectors, who were reportedly inspecting nuclear sites inside Iran several times a day until the Israeli strikes began.
Fordow, as far as we're aware and have been told, had not been struck by the Israelis yet. But just this morning we put together a video suggesting the Israeli military was clearing a path from the Persian Gulf to the south of Iran, which is likely where American aircraft would enter Iranian airspace, potentially from Qatar, the Saudi Arabian peninsula, or somewhere else.
Everything now lines up with strikes taking place today. It's Saturday, it's the weekend, and Bitcoin has fallen to about 101, just below its 102 support line, so we're seeing some negative market reaction. This means the United States has now stepped into the war between Iran and Israel.
So the question now is, is this it? Donald Trump suggests the next phase should be a peaceful one, and hopefully we can return to peace. These were among the scenarios I walked through with my course members in the Alpha Report, and we've discussed them on the channel too. When we set up trading scenarios, we say "if this, then that." For example, we might say that if Circle goes down in the first five minutes of trading, be ready to pick up a bounce, because it could shoot up 20%. That's exactly what happened on Friday. You can look at the history of that in the Alpha Report archive and in the course members' live streams.
The point is, we laid out best-case scenarios. Best-case scenario number one was a negotiated solution, with some form of capitulation from Iran, specifically that they would stop enriching before any strikes from the United States. This morning Khamenei made it very clear that the negotiations in Geneva were unacceptable. He began assigning replacements to himself and others in the Iranian military and the Revolutionary Guard in case they were taken out. That suggests Iran is digging in: the deals on offer in Geneva, which would have meant going to zero enrichment, were not good enough, so they weren't interested in negotiating and were going to dig in. That came at the same time we were bringing more B-2 bombers into the region.
So, unsurprisingly, the negotiations weren't going anywhere, and we were walking toward these strikes, which have now officially been carried out. We've talked about Esfahan. We don't know whether the 15 barrels of highly enriched uranium are actually there, or whether they have now been destroyed by the bombs the United States dropped.
The expectation is that the United States is coming in as the mop-up crew. In other words, we're striking in a way the Israelis can't. The Israelis take out anti-aircraft launchers, such as SAM surface-to-air missile sites and vehicles, and prepare a path for B-2 bombers. B-2 bombers get refueled off the coast of Iran, which is very normal. A B-2 fully fueled but without bombs can reach Iran from a significant distance. However, once you're carrying 30,000-pound bombs, it's a different situation. We'll have to wait and see what footage comes out of the actual bombardments, but Donald Trump says these strikes were successful.
My guess is that they hit three different sites, and we're probably looking at somewhere between six and twelve B-2 bombers used in this attack, each dropping about two bombs, potentially along with F-16s, which we've already seen building up in Saudi Arabia at bases that US and allied forces can operate from.
So what does this mean? We talked about Esfahan: if some of the enriched uranium wasn't moved, it may now be destroyed. Enriched uranium generally isn't considered a fallout hazard, so that's less of a concern. Natanz has already been bombarded pretty heavily, so it's likely that was just finished off. The strike on Fordow is what we've been discussing for about a week, and based on what we're hearing, it's the first strike on Fordow, basically the initial strike and the final one.
So now the question is this. The first best-case scenario was a negotiated solution before strikes, and that didn't happen. The second-best scenario is a negotiated solution after strikes. What we're hoping for now, and sorry if I have food in my teeth, I literally stepped out of a wedding because I saw these strikes were happening. That's what happens when you have notifications on for Truth Social. And a shout-out to the team for messaging me, "Kevin, are you on this?"
Anyway, the first scenario didn't work out, and the next best one is a negotiated solution after the strikes. That's where Iran basically says, "Okay, look, we messed up, we give up. We'll go to zero enrichment." Remember, and I understand this is a bit like science class, but if you enrich U-235 for peaceful purposes, you can also use that U-235 for weapons. You can't run a peaceful nuclear program without fission, and fission needs U-235. You can have a lot of U-238, even 97% of it, but you need that 3% U-235, so you need enrichment to reactor grade and to weapons grade, which you have to refine through centrifuge processes. Even a peaceful program produces plutonium-239, which can also be used in weapons. So the components of a peaceful energy program can be used for weapons, and its byproducts can too, and you could obviously use straight U-235 for weapons themselves.
So the best outcome now would be Iran backing down and saying, "Well, we're done. We won't enrich anymore. You got us, you hit us hard, it's over." A lot of people have asked me how they could have struck these sites at all. It isn't just a two-dimensional problem of knowing where to hit, where a spy paints a spot and you strike that GPS coordinate. There's also a third dimension, knowing how deep to go. You have to get through potential false cavities and false tunnels, and you have to make sure the bomb penetrates to the right depth. Otherwise, even a 30,000-pound bomb, most of which is metal, about 25,000 pounds of it, with only around 5,000 pounds of actual warhead, won't detonate at the target depth. I suspect the United States had satellite imagery from when these sites were built and went into the archives to know exactly what was where, and that's how these strikes were carried out successfully.
Then again, we also have to evaluate whether the strikes were really successful, because everything Trump does is successful, by his own words, so we have to take that with a grain of salt. But let's assume for a moment the strikes were not successful. That would be very embarrassing for Donald Trump. It's possible Iran could argue the strikes failed, and that would lead to a third scenario, which isn't one of our first or second best cases. It's a worst case, where Iran says, "Your strikes failed, you didn't get our stuff, and now we're definitely building a bomb." That's bad, because it could lead to a protracted war or conflict. Worst-case scenario number four would be some form of actual troop deployment, a commando-supported operation by the Israelis backed by the US, to verify the job is complete and that Iran isn't enriching uranium.
Notice that none of what I'm describing is regime change. You don't want regime change, and we've talked about this a lot, so I apologize for the repetition, but as quickly as I can: if you take out a regime, you leave a power vacuum. Who replaces it? Are you going to orchestrate elections like you did in Iraq? Nobody will trust those elections. Are you going to put the Israeli military in charge? Nobody will trust that either, and you'd end up with a Gaza 2.0. Nobody wants that. Are you going to install a US-appointed government? Nobody wants that either. So the people would have to elect a government and trust that process, and that hasn't been done successfully yet. What's better is for the regime to realize, "All right, we're not going to enrich uranium, we step back." So the question now is how bad the response will be, and that's what we have to see. Hopefully, now that the strikes have been carried out, they were in fact successful. If they were, then yes, we can get to a negotiated solution, if Iran is open to it. Let's hope so, because if not, we get into a situation where oil skyrockets above 100, possibly with retaliation and the Strait of Hormuz shutting down, and oil goes over 100, over 125. We start moving into recessionary territory, based on consumer purchasing power, in an environment where employment is already very weak. That isn't about existing unemployment levels; it's about the pace of hiring. Hiring is very weak and job vacancies are weak, so it's a rough time, a sensitive time for the economy to absorb more of this kind of damage.
So I'll have to wait and see what happens. Follow for more, and I'll keep you updated. Thank you so much.
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