You're overlooking the fact that Iran had ballistic missile capabilities (multistage) that were unknown before. Even Mossad evidently didn't know that they could range out over 4,000km. And if you can build a two-stage rocket that can go that far, you can work on a 3-stage rocket capable of hitting the US. Then throw in their 60% enriched uranium.

And if you can do all that before Operation Epic Fury, you can do all that after Operation Epic Fury.

No one's overlooking it. We're simply pointing out that this particular operation doesn't eliminate the threat of anything Iran might do (or might have done) in the future in terms of weapons development. It probably doesn't materially delay it. Because you can bet that they've learned from this war, and learned that their missiles and drones are far more effective defensive deterrents than their Air Force or Navy. So the post-war defensive rebuild is going to be far more focused on more and more missiles.

I'm amazed at the number of people who really don't believe the Iranians wanted the bomb. It's just head-scratching.

Why is that headscratching? If they wanted to race to a bomb, they could have had one years ago. So clearly there was some internal resistance to taking that step.

They certainly wanted a bomb. But they also recognized there were downsides to doing that that mitigated against the benefits of getting one.

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