SecureSignals
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User ID: 853
SecureSignals
10d ago
For the record, if it turns out Netanyahu has died there is no information, medical records, doctor testimony, audio, video that could convince me it was a poorly timed medical event rather than an Iranian attack haha.
They definitely can't keep it secret for a long period of time, but probably long enough for a severe escalation to put things past the point of no return. IF he is dead and they are trying to keep it secret, I suspect there's going to be a huge escalation, maybe an attack on Iranian infrastructure or worse. I do think Netanyahu's death would be a potential de-escalatory turning point because it gives the Iranians a powerful symbol to declare victory and return to the negotiating table. And the Israeli power vacuum could cause the US to hesitate, not to mention potential US allies and the Gulf States. If he is actually dead, and Israel wants to escalate, I do think they have a motive to keep it secret. Israel's desire for escalation is suggested by their attack on the Iranian Oil storage facilities, which kicked off the ongoing price volatility in oil markets.
But I agree by far more likely is laying low to avoid provocation and denunciation by potential allies. But then there's Ben-Gvir, who has also been notably absent. So something is going on there, there's a reason this is happening.
SecureSignals
10d ago
I think this is true, which is why I don't see how security concerns would be the reason for Netanyahu's total absence in his public-facing role. He can do meetings and pressers and meet-and-greets! The Iranian leaders actually can't. So why hasn't he done any public engagement like that, at all, for a week?
SecureSignals
10d ago
How is the MAGA v America First schism an example of that though?
The real story is the Ziocons weren't with Trump in 2016, they didn't create the movement, but after his ascendancy they found him pliable and then they took over the movement and purged the anti-semites. The end. I don't see the lesson you are proposing here.
It's not really ironic, because I and others do believe in a high likelihood that Khamenei is dead or severely injured also due to the lack of public presence typically shown by a wartime leader.
You want irony, I saw some IDF guy on Fox News earlier today float the theory Khamenei is dead, and he actually said the Iranians should release a video of him to prove he's not dead... it was literally like he was saying "we released the Coffee Shop video to prove Netanyahu isn't dead, what do you have Khamenei?" It's a strange situation.
Of course Twitter uses proceeded to AI generate a video of Khamenei in the exact same coffee shop scene replacing Netanyahu, pretty funny warfare nowadays.
SecureSignals
10d ago
I think they are definitely conspiracy baiting, I proposed that as the explanation for the "disappearing ring" but I don't feel fully explains Netanyahu's leadership strategy here... it's more of an addon misdirection to a different strategy they are pursuing by keeping Netanyahu out of the limelight for some reason.
Netanyahu Conspiracy Theories on X and Mark Levin as MAGA
Quick rundown:
- Netanyahu has had no public appearances since March 9th, leading to huge speculation on X that Netanyahu is dead, there are a couple different theories for which strike killed him.
- Netanyahu's son tweeted an average of something like 20-30 tweets a day up until March 9th, and then did not send a single Tweet until today- anomalous.
- Netanyahu was not present at the past two Security Council meetings he almost always leads, which is anomalous.
- The first "public appearance" by Netanyahu was a pre-recorded coffee shop visit released yesterday where he mocked the rumors of his death. Not good enough for many X users who scoured the video trying to find proof of AI creation, none of the evidence of that I found compelling.
- The second "public appearance" by Netanyahu was another pre-recorded video released by his X account of talking to some citizens in the countryside.
- The video released today does have a very suspicious element, the wedding ring on his left finger disappears entirely within a single frame and then reappears seconds later. This is clearly visible in the original video too, not just that edit. Some attribute this to filtering, I can't attest to that and in my own videos with filtering I've never seen a total disappearance of an object like that.
Needless to say, the evidence provided has not dissuaded the rumors on X. I do not think Netanyahu is dead or severely injured, but these anomalies do warrant an explanation.
Why has Netanyahu not had any sort of public presence since March 9th that would be expected from a wartime leader? During the 12-Day War he maintained a public presence and even toured damage sites from missiles and took questions. But now the first time he appears in public in quite some time is is in a pre-recorded video to mock the rumors of his death in a coffee shop?
The easiest answer for the lack of public presence is due to security concerns. But it seems pretty trivial to me for a leader like Netanyahu to maintain a public presence with very low risk, and that risk would certainly be worthy of the benefits of moralizing the Homefront and projecting confidence.
I suspect the reason for this is because Netanyahu wants Trump to be the "face" of the war- several times a day you can see Trump on the News babbling to the media about the war attracting huge amounts of attention, while we can't spare a penny for Netanyahu's own thoughts or leadership at a time it would be expected. In particular, while Trump is clearly trying to muster NATO to join the war, it would be wise for Netanyahu to be far away from weighing in on that question or publicly supporting it because it would do more harm than good.
I do not see how traditional video touchups or filtering would cause the wedding ring to disappear like it did in the video released today, any video editing experts feel free to weigh in. Barring some "yeah I edit videos all the time and I've seen this before", the most likely explanation is that the ring disappearance was a video manipulation, but one intended to misdirect the critics on X- give them a bone to chew on with a false lead.
Mark Levin is MAGA, his critics are not
Rewind to 2016, Mark Levin was an avowed Never-Trumper while the alt-right essentially memed Trump into existence against all expectations. The tables have turned, if it was not already clear what side Trump was on in this feud between the Shapiro/Levin wing of MAGA and the online Right (tbh it was already clear), Trump has picked sides unambiguously:
Mark Levin, a truly Great American Patriot, is somewhat under siege by other people with far less Intellect, Capability, and Love for our Country... When you hear others unfairly attack Mark, remember that they are jealous and angry Human Beings, whose "sway" is much less than the Public understands, and will, now that they know where I stand, rapidly diminish. Other than for his wonderful wife and family, Mark Levin only cares and wants one thing, GREATNESS AND SUCCESS FOR AMERICA! Those that speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside, as do the people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound. THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM...
So there you have it, MAGA has been subsumed, the 2016 alt-right energy that propelled Trump into office is out, hopefully the "plan trusters" now can stop pretending otherwise. For its part Fox News is unsurprisingly 100% behind the war, today they had on another 2016 never-Trumper Ben Shapiro, who gave Trump's Iran War an A+ grade and remarked:
The president, right here, is doing the BRAVEST thing that I’ve ever seen an American president do when it comes to foreign policy
MAGA is not dead, it's the rebranded neo-conservatism. The movement has been subsumed.
SecureSignals
13d ago
I think people here are underestimating 25A possibility if Republicans lose Congress, which is looking increasingly likely. Existing Democrat hatred of Trump + impeding Iran war disaster + global economic crisis + some wildcard (blackmail/allegations etc.) it's not as crazy as it sounds especially if Vance is willing to throw his weight behind it.
SecureSignals
13d ago
Just a thought about Vance's chances for presidency. On the one hand his electoral chances are slipping. On the other hand he has the greatest opportunity anybody will ever have of becoming the "American Caesar": 25A Trump, attest to the foreign subversion of US government, invoke any and all power under the sun (all the ones Abraham Lincoln used, any new ones since then), ignore the courts, air out the dirty laundry to stir the masses, orchestrate mass FARA surveillance and prosecution campaign (remember FARA allows you to surveil anyone who is a degree of separation from the target), sue for peace with Iran with an offer that throws Israel under the bus.
It won't happen, but Vance actually has the crisis at his fingertips to become one of the great American historical figures. Instead he'll take the flak for the war and Rubio I guess will be the GOP nominee.
Sure it's a subtle distinction but it's important to determine the threat-level. An actual nuclear bomb is a technology that requires the integration of many components, highly enriched uranium being one of the most important for sure. You can say "the engine manufacturer is trying to build a car", eh not really it's trying to build an engine. If you extended the logic to "well the engine would only be used in a car so they are building the car" then that would extend to Iran's missile program as well.
Iran is a country with highly competent engineers, the US stratotanker was shot down yesterday (killing 6) by an in-house developed anti-air missile. The notion Iran has been trying but unable to engineer this 1940s technology is false, it has not been trying to build a nuclear bomb, and this is attested to by all the international agencies who have weighed in and no intelligence has been provided suggesting otherwise. I already described the reasoning Iran had for enriching the nuclear material.
Most likely the plan was for this highly enriched stockpile to form the basis for "imminent threat" to muddy the waters in exactly this way. "Their highly enriched stockpile means they are trying to build a nuclear bomb now", even if that's not actually true, at least muddies the water with respect to Iran's motives.
But Iran offered to hand over that highly-enriched material in an agreement with the US. My take is that this offer, demonstrating actual good-faith towards a likely agreement, was their death sentence as they got bombed immediately after making that major concession.
But now Witkoff and Kushner can't point to that highly enriched stockpile to say "Iran was trying to build a bomb." So the Witkoff narrative shifts to the controversy over the 20% enrichment for the TRR which doesn't even come close anymore to the notion that Iran was trying to build a nuclear bomb, and we had to bomb them in the middle of negotiations in order to stop them.
The truth is that Witkoff and Kushner were not hampered in those negotiations by a lack of expertise. They had access to the highest expertise in the world to achieve their objectives of the negotiation, and their objectives were war with Iran. The idea that Witkoff misunderstood the enrichment for TRR as being an imminent threat to build a nuke is not true at all. The progression of the negotiations weakened the narrative, so they pulled the plug and worked with what they had to get the US started in the war.
Mostly bargaining chip, deterrence, and option to try to create a nuclear weapon in the future. That is not the same as "they are trying to develop a nuclear weapon now" which would constitute "imminent threat." The notion of "imminent threat" that could justifiably bring the world to the brink like it has now is important. There has been no evidence presented to anyone for "imminent threat", which is why the story is so inconsistent and has waffled between "they were going to attack the US" (no evidence) and "they are an imminent nuclear threat" (no evidence).
The Iranians also enriched that material after Trump reneged on the previous Iran deal. So is this responding to an imminent threat, or is this pretext for war on top of a planned controversy over this issue? Who was it again that lobbied most heavily for Trump to exit the Iranian nuclear deal in his first term?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday claimed to have evidence that Iran has lied about its nuclear program and urged President Donald Trump to “do the right thing” next month by pulling out of a 2015 deal designed to curb Iran’s atomic ambitions...
Netanyahu spoke less than two weeks before a May 12 deadline that Trump has cited as a decision point he may use to withdraw from the multinational agreement negotiated by the Obama administration...
One former Obama administration foreign policy official said that Netanyahu’s speech likely had “an audience of one": Donald Trump.
“That is just not an acceptable situation,” Trump said at the White House on Monday in response to a question about the Israeli leader’s remarks.
Trump also warned that Iran was not merely “sitting back idly,” but he declined to say whether he will terminate the agreement next month. “We’ll see what happens,” the president said. “I’m not telling you what I’m doing, but a lot of people think they know.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, fired back on Twitter on Monday, calling the Israeli leader’s speech “a rehash of old allegations already dealt with by the [International Atomic Energy Agency] to ‘nix’ the deal. How convenient. Coordinated timing of alleged intelligence revelations ... just days before May 12.”
Also skeptical was J Street, a Washington-based liberal Israel policy group critical of Netanyahu’s foreign policy.
“While Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump have long been determined to undermine this agreement, their own security establishments continue to confirm that the deal is working and that Iran is compliant with all of its commitments. Nothing we were shown today contradicts or disproves that expert assessment,” said Dylan Williams, the group‘s vice president of government affairs.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the GOP chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, seemed to agree, telling Bloomberg TV in an interview that Netanyahu’s speech brought “nothing new” to the contentious debate surrounding the agreement.
In his remarks, Netanyahu argued that the seized Iranian intelligence proves the nuclear deal was negotiated in poor faith.
“The Iran deal, the nuclear deal, is based on lies. It’s based on Iranian lies and Iranian deception,” he said. “This is a terrible deal. It should never have been concluded. And in a few days, President Trump will make his decision on what to do with the nuclear deal. I’m sure he will do the right thing.”
So Trump breaks the deal, Iran starts enriching again, and then Witkoff and Kushner declare "imminent threat" on the mere existence of enriched material that Iran has proposed to hand over to the US as part of an agreement.
The Iranian offer to handover the highly-enriched material threw a wrench into the works, most likely, hence why the 20% enrichment for the Tehran Research Reactor is the "best" Wiktoff/Kushner could come up with to convince Trump of some "imminent threat" to justify another war for Israel.
SecureSignals
14d ago
Thanks fixed.
Do you have answers to my questions?
I did answer your question- Iran offered to turn over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and maintain enough enrichment for its civilian nuclear facility. It's a rational offer, not one that should have been reacted to with war.
It seems pretty clear to me that Iran has been trying to develop nuclear weapon capability. I guess you dispute this?
You can read the article I linked, there is in fact no evidence of that and none of the experts cited agreed with that conclusion. Iran offered to hand over all of its enriched material.
The major "ignorance" if it can be called that is Trump seemed to be under the impression that the Iranians negotiating 20% enriched material for their civilian reactor was equivalent to an assertion to be a nuclear power. But the fuel for that civilian reactor was already part of the Obama-era deal and no experts cited believed that fuel for this reactor would have remotely constituted the Iranian demands characterized by Witkoff/Trump:
Just 36 hours before the United States opened its military assault, Iran’s nuclear negotiators, along with Oman’s foreign minister as mediator, presented the U.S. with a seven-page proposal for a potential nuclear deal, according to U.S. negotiator Steve Witkoff. But the American negotiators, Witkoff and Jared Kushner — who, according to a senior Middle East diplomat with knowledge of the talks, chose not to include nuclear technical experts in the negotiations — balked at Iran’s request to continue using 20%-enriched uranium at the reactor, a facility for civilian nuclear development that the U.S. first built and provided to Iran in 1967.
“The claim that they were using a research reactor to do good for the Iranian people was a complete and false pretense to hide the fact that they were stockpiling there,” a senior Trump administration official told reporters during a briefing on Tuesday, three days after the attacks began.
But the Trump administration has yet to provide evidence or intelligence — to the public or to Congress — demonstrating that Iran intended to use the uranium at the Tehran Research Reactor for weapon development or that the facility was being covertly used for stockpiling purposes. In two classified briefings provided to lawmakers since the attacks, administration officials made no assertion that the reactor was being used for stockpiling purposes for a potential weapon, according to two people familiar with their comments.
...The reactor requires 20%-enriched fuel and a relatively minimally enriched amount compared with the material required for the production of a nuclear weapon. Under the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, known as the JCPOA, the reactor would have access to no more than 5 kilograms of 20%-enriched uranium at a time, supplied from outside the country and monitored by inspectors.
The reactor has not come under IAEA scrutiny for suspected nuclear development in more than 25 years, according to Katariina Simonen, a board member of Pugwash Conferences of Science and World Affairs and an adjunct professor at the Finnish National Defence University.
“TRR is not ideal for any other activity than what it is designed for — i.e., civilian use (isotopes, research, training),” Simonen told MS NOW. “It is a small, light-water reactor supplied by the U.S. under the Atoms for Peace program.”
Nobody has presented any evidence that Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon. None of the international agencies attest to that.
What is absolutely stunning is that 20% enriched material needed for Tehran Research Reactor was already resolved by the Obama-era deal that Trump ripped up. So Trump literally ended the deal that solved the exact controversy Witkoff cited as imminent threat and cause for war. It's really uneblievable.
Keith Woods has a pretty good article on some of the absurdity with linked sources:
On the question of the apparent nuclear threat, we have learned that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who led the U.S. negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, conducted the talks without nuclear technical experts and based their concerns on a research reactor, unaware that such a reactor is incapable of enriching uranium. When the Iranians made a good-faith offer to hand over their highly enriched uranium but keep the Tehran Research Reactor built for them by Eisenhower. Witkoff and Kushner, due to their ignorance of the subject, apparently interpreted this as a demand to become a nuclear power:
Elena Sokova, the executive director of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, called the administration’s assessments of the Tehran Research Reactor “confusing and misleading” and riddled with “technical errors.”“It mixes up different elements of the nuclear program and their potential proliferation capabilities,” Sokova said. “Research reactors are not capable of doing enrichment of uranium, whether for civil or military purposes.”
Witkoff defended the decision to bring no nuclear experts by saying he had “read quite a bit about it.”
Aside from having no technical knowledge and bringing no advisors or nuclear experts, Witkoff was apparently ignorant of previous agreements and negotiations with Iran, did not bring a diplomat who was knowledgeable of these things, did not take notes, and did not understand Iranian proposals.
Trump relayed to the press that Witkoff told him Iran’s message was "essentially, in a real nutshell: We want to continue to build nuclear weapons." None of the mediators present reported this. The Omani foreign minister who mediated the talks travelled to Washington and told J.D. Vance and U.S. media outlets that the negotiations had made “substantial, momentous, and unprecedented progress.”
Think about how insane this is — either the war was sparked by America’s representatives being totally ignorant of nuclear enrichment while negotiating a nuclear deal, and no one along the way picking up their error, or alternatively, they actively misled Trump to lead to war with Iran on Israel’s behalf. So that’s either gross negligence and incompetence or high treason.
Who would have thought that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner representing America's interest could have led to this result?
The Witkoff/Kushner subversion is the "Iraqi WMDs" 2.0.
SecureSignals
14d ago
This community is a spinoff of a spinoff of a rationalist community, there are is no question there are a lot of Zionist Jews here.
The MAGA types that would be here are more likely to be of the variety highly skeptical of the war (the low-IQ MAGA rank-and-file that supports the war at like 90%+ are not represented here much as far as I can tell). High-IQ Iran War supporters here, very likely to be Jews. Not to say there also aren't skeptical Jews as well.
But I don't get why people would want a location marker to correlate people's opinions on this question. If you really wanted signal you would want a different kind of profile badge that would not be appropriate for this forum.
SecureSignals
15d ago
It's remarkable that there's so little discussion of contemporary historical events on here.
I think it's because there is so much uncertainty and fog of war, none of us want to go full Panican- "US hegemony over, global economic collapse imminent, US military humiliation" and then some ceasefire happens and be told "see it wasn't as bad as you thought." Or the inverse, people don't want to downplay it, say it's imminently over, but then it has a really bad fallout.
Like I alluded to in my previous response, there is essentially no reaction from the ground. Not from MAGA rank-and-file in day-to-day casual talk, and there is even some sympathy from diehard anti-Trump Democrats I know. Literally today I heard an extreme Trump-hater say something along the lines of "well Iran wants to destroy Israel for some reason, so they obviously can't have a nuke so I understand what Trump is doing to an extent."
The issue seems to have remarkably low cultural salience at the moment outside of X, but of course I think there's a reason for that. I remember Operation Iraqi Freedom, the feeling and interest among public in the opening weeks of the war was nothing like that at all in either direction today. There are Panicans on X and some informed anti-Panicans, but the average voter just doesn't seem to care very much at this point. With that said, what's your prediction? Does this blow over without the average voter taking much notice?
SecureSignals
15d ago
Are Rubio and Vance done for? On the ground I don't see much discontent from rank-and-file MAGA, in fact at this point less discontent than over the Benghazi situation, that could change depending on exactly how big of a disaster this becomes for the global economy.
SecureSignals
18d ago
Trump could offer a Palestinian State and the expulsion of the Jews from the West Bank in exchange for significant compromise on Iran's nuclear capabilities and tech.
No nuclear enrichment, lift sanctions, Palestinian state, expel the Jews from the West Bank and make the West Bank part of Palestine. No Israeli presence in Syria.
The real problem is the only sane offramps would go against Israel, we aren't actually in an unresolvable situation, it only seems there's no offramp because we aren't allowed to compromise the interests of Israel for the interests of America and the rest of the world.
Well yeah, we do blame Trump, or at least I do. But that's an even worse problem, because it proves that these loyalties to Israel have to be rooted out of our government on both the D and R side, it's not a matter of just "find someone with higher agency who can balance these concerns more responsibly". I'm never supporting a candidate who vocally supports Israel, ever again. Compromise is impossible- "Trump is based but he supports Israel, we'll support him in hopes he gives use the change we want without compromising the very existence of our Empire on behalf of the Jews." Didn't work. The Right-Wing Zionist/Brown Alliance the BAP sphere insists upon in opposition to "peasant antisemitism" is impossible. It's not just about the advisors, it's about the politicians themselves. Supporting Israel should make you unelectable in both parties, it's the only solution. Newsom is pivoting hard in that direction, reading the writing on the wall. Woke shit sucks, but it's not nearly as dangerous as this fifth column, and demonstrated loyalty to that fifth column even if it's bundled with based rhetoric should be a disqualifier whether you are left-wing or right-wing.
So I agree with you, I can criticize the lifestyle of people who indulge while at the same time resolve that nobody in bed with those salesmen should have power anywhere in America.
So we have two theories:
- Israel maneuvered America into war with Iran
- America maneuvered Israel into war with Iran
I'm sure all those visits by Netanyahu to the oval Office were Netanyahu taking Trump's orders for staying on the warpath (despite media reports that the opposite was the case).
Notably Trump qualifies his belief that Iran was going to attack first as his "opinion", because US intelligence has confirmed that they were not going to attack first.
Senator Warner, a top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and "Gang of Eight" had this to say about Trump's opinion:
Let's also be clear... there was no imminent threat to the US by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If you equate a threat to Israel as equivalent to an imminent threat to the United States then we are in uncharted territory.
Warner is only wrong that we are in uncharted territory, we are in the territory that brought us to Iraq twice and now here, only instead of platitudes and debates and lies about Hussein-9/11-Al Qaeda connections, existing WMDs, babies being ripped from their incubators in Kuwait, Spreading Democracy, they don't even feel the need to lie to us anymore with high ideals or fabricated intelligence.
So I guess "Iran was going to attack first" is the narrative they are going to go with, but they don't even have any fabricated intelligence or false flag or anything. IC says that is false, and Trump just says it was his opinion.
Beware of black-pills by people who hate America.
Growing awareness of the extent and mode of operation by Jews in European society has never led to habituation, it has always led to blowback, maybe this time it will be different but the cracks are beginning to show: for the first time ever Americans are more sympathetic to Palestine than Israel (yes that is largely inspired by rote third worldism but every passing day even the third worldists are sounding more antisemitic rather than just pro-Brown.)
The NYT already reported Democrat leaders questioning us being led into this war by Netanyahu, which never even entered the minds of our political representatives during the Iraq war. The Jewish archetype and genius is optimized for maximum effectiveness when it's inscrutable, when it's out in the open it historically does not work very well. Maybe this time it will be different. Or maybe Iran is able to make this war painful for America and its Allies, even if it has no chance of actually winning, and there will be blowback to Israel and diaspora Jews.
Certainly there is no plausible narrative for this war other than being led into it by Israel. You underestimate the pincer movement closing in against Jews and Israel from both the right and the left. A quick victory that beer guzzling Patriots can hang their hat on has the highest chance of fortifying their hegemony, but it's not certain and if this escalates into a prolonged crisis the Jews will be blamed, which did not happen with the Iraq crisis.
What's actually remarkable is that there was no false flag, not even a false pretext like Iraqi WMDs. Trump didn't even try to justify the war to the public to any significant degree. People here are struggling to develop alternative explanations (we are overthrowing Iran because of the protests, funny people actually believe that). There's not even really a solid "narrative" for the apologists for the war. The Administration briefly claimed they had intelligence claiming Iran was planning an attack on US assets, which was immediately debunked by our own intelligence agencies.
So why even need a false flag? They aren't even trying to get the support of the public, they are just doing it, that is a testament to their level of control they don't even go through the motions of trying to justify it. This Rubio statement is literally the best they can come up with! Their hands were tied by Israel, according to them.
With Iraq the dialectic was "we're doing it for Oil" versus "we're doing it to prevent WMDs and spread Democracy" (of course both sides of the dialectic were wrong, we were doing it for Israel). But there's not even anything like that dialectic for this war, Rubio's position is "our hands were tied by Israel". So people who support it and planned it and people who oppose it essentially agree we are being pulled into this by Israel.
SecureSignals
24d ago
Trump claimed credit for stopping the executions, and the mobilization happened after the protests died down. So he already claimed victory on that front, not to mention the fact that the protests themselves were pushed by the US and Israel.
And earlier you said:
Would Israel not have struck Iran if the U.S. weren't involved?
No they wouldn't have, their plan relied on US involvement and Netanyahu made sure of it.
SecureSignals
24d ago
You are ignoring the military buildup. Yes, the military buildup would be likely to provoke retaliation, but why do it in the first place? Because America is Israel's bitch and Israel cannot take on Iran alone and it knows it. So Netanyahu goes to Washington, Trump sends an obvious preparation for an attack, and then the US attacks on the logic that an attack would prompt retaliation. It's not a matter of "game theory", it's a matter of the US dancing to the tune of Netanyahu. This buildup was always going to lead to an attack, you don't bluff with that degree of military hardware.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed with no clear path to opening, Dubai International Airport is shut down, maintaining ~30 missiles a day is enough for mass economic disruption and disruption to daily life. The copium about Iran running out of missiles every day hasn't happened. We've gone from "We've won" to "We're winning" to "Please Help open the Strait" in 3 weeks.
Marcus Crassus fought the Persians (technically Parthians) at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. His strategy was to wait for the Persians to run out of arrows before attacking with his infantry. But it turned out the Persians were being resupplied with camels, so the Romans attacked, and suffered one of their worst defeats in history. Crassus himself was killed during subsequent negotiations to end the fighting. Legend has it that the Parthians poured molten gold down his throat to mock his greed.
It certainly cannot be attributed to the Jewish Zionist wing that now owns MAGA like Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, given that they opposed it in 2016. I think it's delusional to think Trump would have won without the "meme magic" that constantly went viral on the Internet and basically defined his image/aesthetic, but in any case it was a far greater part of the creation of that movement than the people that actively opposed it at the time but now claim they define it. Chutzpah.
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