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Comment by dismalaf | Hacker News Reader

It was pretty obvious it would happen this weekend, no corruption needed.

The Iran protests happened, Iran massacred a bunch of protesters, Trump said "Help is on the way". Then US aircraft carriers started moving towards the middle east. Trump started negotiating with Iran, making demands Iran would never agree to. Trump gave his usual ultimatums, aircraft carriers finally got into position, Iran still being belligerent, and nearing the end of Trump's ultimatum... Like, all the signs were there. There's a strange consistency to Trump's erratic behaviour...

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Plans were changed last minute because an opportunity arose to take out Iran's leader. It was obvious something was going to happen, but not what or when. The American war fleet deploying would've served as an effective containment strategy if the US military would do another simple kidnapping like they did in Venezuela.

The large protests passed their peaks a while ago. The American military has been deploying to the area for a while. This attack could've happened any day in the past weeks, or it could've taken another couple of weeks of shit flinging, slow escalation, and meaningless threats from Iran's government.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-888274

Grok predicted it.

The signs were there. Plans changing is their story, but the US buildup had just finished days prior.

Somehow, someone still lost $500k against that bet. Not that kind of 'obvious' then.

Doesn't mean everyone's always paying attention.

Also, do you have a link that someone lost $500k? Because it's not in the original link.

If someone made 500k, then someone lost 500k.

Any money you win gambling has to come from someone else, it doesn't just appear.

So you don't know anything about gambling lol.

Yes, generally both sides of the book balance (minus a cut for the bookie). But there's not automatically another exactly opposite bet of the same size lol.

I don't think knallfrosch's post was implying it was a singular someone.

Like if you say "someone is at the door", you don't literally mean that exactly one person is at the door.

Saying "someone lost $500k" definitely implies one person. 10,000 people losing $50 isn't noteworthy.

And someone at the door? If you see 3 people, you don't say someone. You'd only say someone if you're expecting it to be one person (which it usually is knocking at a door).

Nah, it was the surf & turf in the chow hall.

To be fair, Trump usually chickens out.

But in this case I guess there wasn't enough pushback. And the thing that made it if not obvious certainly rather likely was the aircraft carrier movement which isn't exactly subtle, though very often just used for intimidation.

The thing which is at least a little surprising is the talk about aircraft carriers being very vulnerable to attack with drones / cheap missiles / etc. didn't materialize and if it were going to, Iran would be the one to realize it unless a full on world war were to erupt.

> To be fair, Trump usually chickens out.

I feel like he mostly chickens out on tarrifs or things that have a large potential for high costs or where the opponent has some actual leverage.

Here he is blowing up Iran. Iran doesnt really have the ability to blow up america in return. This is exactly the sort of thing i would expect him to follow through on.

> The thing which is at least a little surprising is the talk about aircraft carriers being very vulnerable to attack with drones / cheap missiles / etc.

I think that is because it was largely wishful thinking. At least when it comes to Iranian capabilities. I dont think people who were experts in the field believed Iran had the capabilities to seriously harm american aircraft carriers.

Ah ok so what actually happened is we went to war because Israel wanted to and chickening out, in this case, was allowing them to convince him that they were going to start it and if he didn't help it was going to be much worse.

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