The Raid That Never Happened
The airstrip was picked, the CIA was running info campaigns, the aircrafts went down, the plan went down in flames like a Chinook
In The Mountain Nobody Bombed, I laid out a simple but crazy idea based off the available info at the time. 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent was and still is unaccounted for. The facility I think could be housing it? Pickaxe Mountain, Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La. It sits an estimated 800 meters deep in the Zagros foothills, one mile south of Natanz (Yes that Natanz). No conventional weapon can reach it. But that isn’t the reason is hasn’t been bombed yet. It’s consequence. Bombing it seals the uranium inside permanently or at least for a long enough period of time that would require months to reestablish the entrance. Collapse the tunnels and you bury the lifeline of this country under a mountain you can’t dig through with a few shovels.
The only way to get what’s inside is to go in through the front door and carry it out.
On April 3, 2026, I believe someone tried to do this exactly!
The Wreckage
An F-15E Strike Eagle from the 494th Fighter Squadron at RAF Lakenheath was shot down over southwestern Iran. Both crew ejected. The pilot was recovered within hours. The WSO, a full-bird Colonel (I have some serious questions about this), spent 36 hours in the Zagros Mountains before being extracted by SEAL Team Six, 160th SOAR Night Stalkers, and hundreds of SOF operators.
At a forward airstrip geolocated to approximately 50km south of Isfahan. U.S. forces destroyed two MC-130J Commando II special operations transports and at least one MH-6 Little Bird helicopter rather than let them fall into Iranian hands. The MC-130Js reportedly became “stuck in the sand” and destroyed by the raid force. Three more aircraft had to fly in to extract the personnel. Each MC-130J costs over $100 million.
FlightGlobal noted the “striking similarity” between this wreckage and the Desert One crash site from Operation Eagle Claw in 1980. The Iranians made the same comparison. They may be more right than they know and more right than any American is willing to accept.
OSINT geolocation map compiled by Shin (@hey_itsmyturn). F-15E crash site, FARP location south of Isfahan, and CSAR aircraft positions.
140 Kilometers
The geolocated FARP sits 140km from Pickaxe Mountain. The Abbottabad raid (Osama Bin Laden) launched from 160km. Nearly identical standoff distance.
The force package that was left behind MC-130Js, Night Stalker Little Birds, SEAL Team Six who is not a combat search and rescue play. You send Air Force PJ’s to recover a downed pilot. You send DEVGRU and Delta Force to assault a hardened target with the most important target inside. Those Little Birds don’t carry stretchers. They carry operators into confined target areas like a tunnel entrance with the most important contents inside.
You do not stand up a FARP 50km south of Isfahan in 12–24 hours as an improvised response to a shot down F15. I have seen people on multiple social media platforms that are cheering for the rescue (which you should) but also saying how insane it is that a FARP was setup and utilized in this time span. A FARP normally requires weeks of ISR, ground reconnaissance, soil analysis (for landing), ingress route planning. That FARP was already there and the shoot down didn’t create the need for it. The shoot down accidentally exposed it, but I do have another possible theory I might write up for you guys.
The Cover Story
Even if you don’t think we have the greatest military on earth, you do probably know we have the greatest propaganda machine. Remember back in March 2003, the Pentagon told us PFC Jessica Lynch fought to the last round and was dramatically rescued from a Iraqi hospital that was heavily defended? Well turns out she later testified before Congress that she never fired her weapon, the hospital was undefended, and she was “used as a symbol”.
So back to this “movie”, within just hours of the WSO extraction, the CIA was openly bragging about running a “deception campaign” inside Iran. Trump posted “WE GOT HIM!” and called it the most daring operation in U.S. history. It was just like a movie!! Behind Enemy Lines 2! The story was packaged and delivered before anyone could ask the only questions that matter:
What were Night Stalker Little Birds and $200 million in special operations aircraft doing 50km from Isfahan and 140km from Pickaxe Mountain? Why were two military transport planes on the ground? How did this pilot know exactly where to head to?
The WSO was rescued near Kolah Ghazi National Park. Which on the Shin map is plotted just southwest of Isfahan, very close to the FARP location. So the WSO went down in Kohgiluyeh, hiked a 7,000-foot ridgeline, and ended up near Kolah Ghazi and that is northeast of where he crashed and Toward the FARP. He literally climbed a mountain after ejecting from a jet which is one of the most violent experiences a human body can ever endure..
He wasn’t running away from danger into random mountains. He was closing the distance to the staging base. So we have a wounded Colonel climbing 7,000 feet into a mountain in the absolute wrong direction if he was attempting to get towards “friendly territory”. But literally in the exact right direction if he was attempting to get to the FARP.
140 Kilometers
Upon finding out what the rescue force was made up of, Polymarket went absolutely insane. The likelihood of boots on the ground for a full on invasion of Iran by the end of April shot up to 100%. You can think what you want about Polymarket, I personally despise it, but it is an insiders paradise for insider trading. So not only do we have this as a reaction, we also have the President having an absolute meltdown today with his posts on social media. So much went into this raid, it had so many moving pieces, and this failure was so massive I don’t think we truly understand yet. This was a one shot, once in a lifetime, never going to have this opportunity again type of raid.
The window is now closed. This cannot be adjusted and tried again. We now have war crimes and the destruction of a society on the menu. This is isn’t just the destruction of a country on the other side of the world, this is the destruction of the current global economy. Maps will not be rewrote, but allies, trade routes, and the entire geopolitical sphere will be rewritten if the tweets turn to action. Good luck when the market opens, but honestly I think you might want to start thinking about your food supply chain, unless something changes.
I said that the sword was already aimed at Pickaxe Mountain. It failed. I hope that if the lights turn out on Iran that the light of hope for a world of peace do not go with it.
The raid happened. It just didn’t go the way they planned.