Prior to the launch of drones and missiles toward Israel on April 13th, Iran warned the US not to intervene. Nonetheless the US did assist in intercepting drones en-route to Israel. According to the ISW:
Iran warned Israel’s partners, particularly the United States and Jordan, not to intervene in Iran’s attack against Israel. Supreme National Security Council-affiliated media warned the United States against intervening in Iran’s attack, claiming that Iran has prepared ballistic missile platforms to target “several US bases in the region.”[20] The Iranian Permanent Mission to the UN similarly warned the United States to “stay away” from the conflict between Iran and Israel.[21] The United States and the United Kingdom have intercepted over 100 drones outside of Israeli airspace at the time of this writing.[22]
Will Iran retaliate against the US, within the next month?
Resolves YES if Iran or their proxies
Attack any US military assets or personnel, civilian infrastructure or individuals, including military bases, embassies, military ships, civilian ships, US territory,
before May 14th, local time in Israel, and
there is credible reporting attributing to Iranian officials (they do not need to be identified) that the attack(s) were specifically in response to the US assisting Israel in the April 13th attack. I.e. unrelated attacks will not count.
An attack need not be successful or cause any casualties to count, but must be a kinetic attack with the potential to cause physical injury or property damage. i.e. cyber attacks do not count.
About civilian ships: cargo is irrelevant, but any American crew or passengers, the boat belonging to an American company or sailing under an American flag would count (as in any one of these would be sufficient).
I won't bet on this market.
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@chrisjbillington yeah RIP my shares, idk for sure what I was thinking 🤔 like, why I was missing what I should've been seeing.
I suppose I was failing at correctly imagining a fire things:
I was underestimating the level of coordination between all the "sharp parts" of Iran's sphere-of-influence. At least in this context. My mental model was that each part would make a positive move at Iran's signal, but may not restrict behavior (like taking targets of opportunity that now have "red tags" on their internal, psychological "Identification Friend or Foe" system.)
It seems likely I was overestimating the overall pessimistic conditions of the fog-of-war. Imagining that territory from a birds eye view, I picture quite a large density of "sharp bits" but a low density of wide area comms/intel distribution/monitoring. If you want some distribution of HE weapons assets in convenient regions in territories you can plausibly use assets stationed within, how much can you track those, how much can adversaries track them? What's the ratio of military assets where their ownership-tag is common knowledge vs assets mysterious (to some degree) to one party or another? If the fog-of-war is dense, the region is "target rich" such that various side's capabilities "scope in" on plausible targets often, and people start pulling triggers - it definitely seems like the US could catch a stray.
Additionally I was obviously misjudging the rate and direction of change in the "temperature" of the conflict. There was a bit of smoke, not a lot of fire, and things rapidly cooled. At least, that's my impression so far.
My sense was that Irael and the US were going to need to move "closer in step" in order to respond to adversaries trying to sneak something through the cracks, and that Iran was going to continue to try to make a point. More presence of US assets: more flights, more boats, more people in convoys transporting stuff overland, etc. Closer to Israeli assets: moving to and from places visibly Israel-controlled, stuff moving in clear lock-step with Israeli intelligence, generally stuff from the US getting pumped in and squeezed closer into the "geographical/temporal bands" of Israel's interactions with the region. More stuff and more close to the bits that'd make contact in a conflict.
"Rapidly escalating temperature" was my guess about where a large set of plausible reactions (like "eye for an eye") leads Iran strategically, if they take some policy like that seriously. You don't just make an weak attempt at the other's eye, you have to actually hit it. And how does the strong but subtle guardian incept the blows? Well, they add their guidance/assets, in the form of a couple hundred tiny lines of logistics and communications and hardware presence - any of which could end up intersecting with one of the pointy bits of Iran & co.'s plausible portfolio of small/large-scale retaliation.
But looking back this seems like a complicated "comedy of errors" kinda hypothetical. It seems like coming up with a justification for insisting on the continued dominance of Murphy's Law - even in situations where different groups are optimizing as hard as is politically feasible against stuff going catastrophically wrong.
I think I've updated against "Murphy's Law" on short timescales, but less strongly against "Murphy's Law" on longer timescales. Or rather, "If you see one thing that really can go wrong, *something* will *eventually* go wrong." That seems more often useful for making predictions.
Specifically in this market, I think people who thought "the US actually getting a bloody nose would be dramatic and consequential, therefore it's unlikely" did better than me. I'm not sure if I'm willing to commit to that heuristic as hard as they do, but I have moved in that direction.
@NevinWetherill for me the fact that Iran was coordinating the strike through the Swiss embassy to tell the US what they were going to do made it clear they didn't want to escalate and their attack was just to save face.
@Daniel_MC Yeah, I saw that, though it didn't seem like it'd actually work to keep things from escalating.
I guess "why bother with coordinating at all unless there's a decent chance it works" should've been more present in my mind...
I guess it burned Israel's political capital as well, made it harder for them to justify to allies doing things that may provoke Iran further. And Iran is probably grumbling but not devastated about needing to sit on their hands for now.
The thing I missed was how many constraints there were in that situation. How much was channeled through diplomacy, how little appetite there was for further escalation, how disinterested/inhibited Iran proxies were about the situation.
Yeah, it seemed like Iran expected to actually get a visible "win," the US needed to respond with personnel and assets deployed to regions that are tied to Israel, and that the aftermath of Israel/Iran not having settled anything was going to mean more smaller attacks by Iran's proxies on places that have opened up as possible targets.
In Iran's place it's what I'd be thinking about:
"How can we use this 'send a message' barrage to reveal/characterize as many Israeli defense assets as possible, while "showing our strength" but not giving away too much info about capabilities?"
"Give them a reason to use nearly 100% of their defensive capacity, perhaps just by continuing to fire cheap rockets in their general direction until the US has to pick up the slack - then, use your more covert/proxy capabilities to send the real message focused on some of those revealed assets."
Anyway, yeah, I had it twisted it seems. It's probably a good thing though. It's a very optimistic update for me about the broader region. Things weren't as close to a new huge war as I thought they might be.
@WieDan true. Any recommendations?
First thoughts are that cargo should be irrelevant, but any American crew, the boat belonging to an American company or flying sailing under an American flag would count (as in any one of those would be sufficient).
Does that sound reasonable?