The Day the Mountain Collapsed
”Nothing left…”
The Day the Mountain Collapsed
By Jim Reynolds
www.reynolds.com
They called it Fordow. Carved into a mountain like a secret jewel. Buried so deep not even God could reach it, they said. The Ayatollah smiled and nodded as his generals whispered about invincibility. Fordow was the insurance policy, the red line, the hidden ace. Until it wasn't.
The bombs came in the dark. Not just any bombs—six of the most powerful bunker-busters ever built by man. GBU-57s. Massive Ordnance Penetrators. Thirty-thousand pounds each, guided by satellites and rage. They didn't just crack the mountain; they hollowed it out like a rotted tooth. By sunrise, the great secret was gone. Centrifuges, tunnels, command centers—vapor. The Ayatollah blinked. So did the world.
Trump didn’t blink. He smirked. "Nothing left," he said on live TV, the camera lights reflecting off his bronze armor of certainty. The pundits clutched pearls. Diplomats sputtered. Iran seethed. But beneath the outrage was a stunned silence. Because the mountain was gone. The one they all said couldn’t be touched. The one the experts swore was unreachable. Bob, for the record, had always said otherwise: "If you can dig it, we can drop something through it."
Fordow wasn't just a facility. It was a myth. A monument to untouchability. And in one night, it joined the ash heap of failed expert prophecy—right next to masks, polls, and DEI training modules. The real shock wasn’t that it happened. It was that Trump, that orange heretic of statecraft, had the nerve to do it. Bob's Law, again: When the experts say something can't be done, it's usually because they don't want it done.
The Ayatollah didn’t die. Not yet. But something in him did. You could see it in the third-tier cleric they trotted out to condemn the strikes. In the satellite images of Fordow, now a sinkhole of glass and silence. In the way Iranian state TV played sad music over archive footage like a propaganda funeral. They knew. Everyone knew.
And yet the world didn’t end. Oil markets hiccupped, then steadied. The Arab League held an emergency summit and issued a strong letter. Europe blinked rapidly but did nothing. China called for calm. Iran launched a few missiles, hit a parking lot and a goat. Then it stopped.
The lesson, Bob said over his coffee, was simple: Mountains collapse when their myths do. Fordow was a mountain of arrogance. Of strategic theater. And in one clean strike, the theater burned.
This was not the start of World War III. It was the end of pretending. The Ayatollah still breathes, but his aura does not. The regime will roar and posture and maybe even lash out. But the spell is broken. And spells, not missiles, are what hold tyrannies together.
Still, the future's not locked in. Maybe they regroup. Maybe they strike back harder. Maybe someone inside decides enough is enough. When death is not something to fear and "principle" is all that counts personally, when the health of the country is not a concern—who really knows what will happen? This unpredictability and disengagement from reality may indeed trigger an internal event that brings Iran, and its millions of great people, into the 21st century.
Bob finished his coffee. "You don’t drop six MOPs unless you’re making a point," he said. "And the point was made."
Then he paused. "But when the other guy doesn’t care if he lives, or if the whole thing burns, that’s not strategy. That’s a coin toss with fire."
The mountain collapsed. The world did not.
Let the experts recalculate.
Postscript Grook: Fordow’s Lesson
They carved their pride
In rock and sand,
Declared it safe
By expert hand.
But myths dissolve
When steel arrives,
And truth cuts deep
Where fear survives.
So let them roar,
And mourn, and bluff—
The mountain fell.
That’s proof enough.