'Growing evidence' war shattered Iran's nuke program, designs to build electromagnetic weapon

The damage to Iran's nuclear program and other weapons systems was indeed extensive and would be difficult to reverse, a leading analyst of U.S. foreign policy wrote on Saturday, citing an Israeli source with detailed knowledge of the matter. 

The 12-day war last month dealt heavy damage to the mullah regime's plans to develop two types of nuclear warheads and an "electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon that could cripple Israel electronically," David Ignatius wrote in his weekly Washington Post column. 

One of the more underappreciated facets of Israel’s devastating offensive was, per Ignatius, the assassination of Iran’s entire cadre of nuclear scientists, resulting not merely in "a massive loss of talent" but also sending a message of deterence to younger Iranian nuclear specialists who now realize that participation in the regime's program amounts to a death sentence.

It is not merely that “Iran is no longer a threshold nuclear state,” as the source is quoted as saying, but its efforts to build two types of nuclear warheads, fission and fusion, were laid to waste. Thus, even if Iran still possesses stockpiles of enriched uranium, weaponization would be extremely challenging, it is understood. 

Israeli attacks halved Iran’s arsenal of 3,000 ballistic missiles and reduced by 80% its 500 missile launchers. The timing of the war prevented Tehran from realizing its plan to boost its ballistic missile stockpile to 8,000. 

There was also one major "unwelcome surprise," the source said, as Israel found Iran's arsenal of solid-fuel missiles, which are harder to target in flight, was larger than expected.