Peter Wildeford
The Power Law, June 13, 2025
“This is the Fordow Paradox — the US can destroy Fordow while Israel cannot; Israel wants Fordow destroyed while the US does not.”
About the author: Peter Wildeford is a top forecaster, ranked top 1% every year since 2022. Here, he shares the news and analysis that informs his forecasts.
In the early hours of June 13, 2025, Israeli F-35I Adir stealth fighters crossed into Iranian airspace, launching precision strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan, while conspicuously avoiding the mountain fortress of Fordow.
Called Operation Rising Lion, this attack involved the Israeli Air Force using over 200 aircraft dropping 330+ munitions on 100 targets. Israeli officials revealed Mossad had established a secret drone base near Tehran months in advance, activating them to destroy missile launchers threatening Israeli cities.
These attacks represent a seismic shift in a decades-long standoff over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. What makes Israel’s response extraordinary isn’t just the scale of destruction to nuclear infrastructure, but the simultaneous decapitation of Iran’s military and scientific leadership. The Israeli attacks killed at least 78 people, but most notably led to the deaths of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Salami — who controlled Iran’s ballistic missiles and regional proxy networks — and top two nuclear architects Fereydoon Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi who were key figures in Iran’s weapons program. Yet for all this devastation, the strikes reveal a critical limitation: Israel couldn’t touch Fordow, where Iran performs its most dangerous enrichment.
This creates the Fordow Paradox that will define the coming crisis: The US possesses the military capability to destroy Fordow but lacks the political will, while Israel has the will but not the capability. This fundamental misalignment between America’s power and Israel’s urgency explains why we’re watching not just another round of strikes, but potentially the first act in nuclear proliferation’s next wave. …SOURCE