> What prevents them from pooling together the funds for 2 decades of relentless cyberattacks on Iran, unless twice the same fee is payed in reverse to compensate for just the threat?

I thought it was clear to everyone that this is _exactly_ what the U.S. and Israel have been doing to Iran for literally 20+ years [0] [1]. In addition to economic warfare, other types of espionage, and acts of terrorism - e.g. blowing up a bunch of people's mobile devices and pagers (in before someone accuse the children and civilians harmed in the attack of being terrorists themselves).

Bad actors have been extracting all kinds of concessions and actions out of Iran for many decades now under all kinds of threats, tactics, and attacks.

This war was literally started by the U.S. and Israel blowing up peace talks in Iran.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_and_Iran