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Thanks for your kind words.

I think you are right, we should consider each possible outcome.

I see 3 possibilities to explain this plan:

1. They are serious critical flaws either in their intelligence capabilities, in their decision making structure, or in both. This could be because the peoples in key positions in their decision making and/or intelligence structure believe their own propaganda, or are lying to their superiors and/or contacts, or because Iran managed to deceive their intelligence gathering operations.
2. This is a cover and the real objective of this potential operation is something else. Hard to tell what it could be, maybe someone with good knowledge of Iran would have an idea.
3. it might be boasting or a red herring for propaganda/intimidation purposes and they don't really intend to do that. There is precedent for this so not impossible, although the fact that we learned it through Iranian channels rather than by open American or Israeli boasting like they (Trump most of all) like to do makes me doubt that possibility.

1 is reasonably likely. I'm somewhat confident that parts of their structure might be lying to each other. Officers lying to their superiors and generals and the pentagon lying to the government all without consequences has been a routine occurrence in the US military for years now so that wouldn't be surprising. We also know that Israel like to manipulate the US government into getting their hands even more dirty on their behalf than the government would have preferred to otherwise, so it's not impossible that Israel might be tricking them. There's also definitely a case to be made about at least some part of the US high ranking officials believing their own propaganda.

I could believe 2 if someone with good knowledge of Iran could give me something that could reasonably constitute the "real objective" that they would want to hide and a reason why they would want a cover for it.

And I don't really believe 3, because as I've said, the silence from the US on this don't make sense when considering the possible objectives they could have by doing this.

Let’s say spec ops succeeds in their mission. It’s not like any of the physical aspects of your analysis would have been wrong. I mean, maybe all the uranium is in one place, and maybe it is in portable containers so it can be trucked around.

I don't know enough of Iran's nuclear program to be certain, but I would find it very weird if they did place all the uranium in one spot. If nothing else, just because they know the US has been hounding them on the issue they should disperse it. Given the national scope of a nuclear program, I would expect Iran to have various types of laboratories, enrichment installations, mines and other necessary facilities all other the country, which would require the uranium to be shared between multiple places at any one time, just because of sheer logistics.

Your point that the uranium might be stored in containers that can be transported by truck has merit, however it has 2 problems. The first is that Iran doesn't enrich uranium just to have a pile of it lying around, they are using the stuff. In other words, chances are that a significant portion of it will be going through many types of machines and prototypes at any given moments. So even if the uranium is typically stored in truckable containers, not all of it will be whenever the operation happens.

The second is that, while these hypothetical containers would be transportable by truck, how easy would it be to attach a container meant for a truck to a helicopter? Because make no mistakes, in an operation like this, they can only use a helicopter, or at least some vtol aircraft like the V-22. Doing it by land is simply not practical for a quick in-strike-out operation. Parachuting from a jet would work for going in but the spec ops would have no way of getting out. And amphibious assault won't work since I seriously doubt Iran has these things anywhere near the shore.

But also, what would a success tell us about imperial intelligence capabilities and about intelligence infiltration in Iran? What would it tell us about spec ops capabilities? What would it tell us about how the empire might make further moves?

The first thing it would tell us is that there is likely still Mossad or maybe CIA spies in Iran. And ones that have access to very sensitive and critical information at that.

About the spec ops capabilities, it would tell us that they potentially aren't as rusted as we assumed from the streak of failures they had in the last decades. Not likely. The streak of failures does set a precedent. I don't believe spec ops can pull this of on their own. Which would make the spy hypothesis more likely.

As for telling us what moves the empire might be able to make, that would be a bleak prospect as it would mean that color revolution is still in the cards due to the spies and infiltrators. I find this unlikely though, as if they could do that I'm pretty sure they would have already.

Anyway, that's my opinion. I'm no expert in any of the relevant topics though so do take it with a grain of salt.