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Comment by unyttigfjelltol | Hacker News Reader

Folks, the President announced the attack and rough date ten days in advance.[1] He did the same exact thing in 2025, with strikes beginning on the 61st day after a 60-day deadline.[2]

This particular market wasn’t about the likelihood of a strike but the probability of radical success. It seems at least possible in the circumstances that the Iran Supreme leader chose his own fate, which was inherently predicable and also exactly what I seem to recall him publicly predicting, albeit without a strict deadline.[3]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86yjnw4x49o

[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-says-he-g...

[3] https://www.malaysianow.com/news/2026/03/01/khamenei-killed-...

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The site you cite for [3] reads:

"Khamenei, the leader of the great nation of Iran, the freedom seekers of the world and the Islamic nations, has joined the highest paradise and reached his long-cherished wish of martyrdom in the holy month of Ramadan," said an announcement aired on Iranian state television.

Sounds to me like it was made up after the fact.

Extracting an 80 year old from their house is a bit harder than you might expect. Even if their stubborness is going to get them killed.

I personally have difficulty believing Iran didn't know that war was inbound, everyone I talk to was anticipating it within a roughly 3-week window and these are people just working off what they read on internet news. Khamenei might not have known he was going to die that day and if he had his family would probably have been elsewhere. But it seems pretty reasonable to assume that he was purposefully not raising his security in his final days. The narrative win of a calm death vs the perfidious Israeli attack is powerful enough that he must have considered it.

There is an understanding that the strike that took him out also took out a lot of visiting high-level leaders; that'd be quite strong evidence against the idea it was intentional. But the fog of war is thick and it doesn't seem safe to take that occurrence as a given yet.

> personally have difficulty believing Iran didn't know that war was inbound

Khamenei wasn't the only one killed in that meeting. All of the evidence points to Iran having expected America to attack at night. And in fact, that was the plan until we learned about that idiotic meeting.

In Islam, a Muslim who dies in war is considered a martyr, and it's desirable to die in the month of Ramadan. In other words, it's something that most Muslims want to have happen, but it's not like something we want to make happen. Like I don't want to die right now, but if I were to die, may as well be during Ramadan.

Yeah, I was recalling public references to Husayn ibn Ali (Haider) [1] preparing for battle. This individual is revered for both martyrdom and victory, so I guess which one he had in mind is technically ambiguous…. It’s also the same figure that the Iranians referenced after his death .[2]

[1] https://nypost.com/2025/06/18/world-news/iran-supreme-leader...

[2] https://www.news18.com/world/in-the-name-of-haidar-last-post...

That gives me pause, given what he's been saying about Cuba recently...

Remember that Trump used the entire SOUTHCOM to focus on Venezuela for months and 2 fleets to focus on Iran for a month (and likely for the next 6). There will likely be lots of “pieces moving on the board” if we are to actively participate in Cuba’s downfall (more than isolating them and cutting off their fuel imports).

You are pretending like it was inevitable that negotiations would fail and that Trump wouldn’t chicken out. Those are the likely alternatives in the betting market.

I would argue that Trump probably wouldn’t have felt confident enough to do this if he wasn’t already running on a high after the Venezuela war going so well for him.

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