Won't know until in a few decades it all gets declassified but my bet was always a US Navy Special Warfare team, aka SEAL team. That is who the US uses for such operations. Previous week there had been US Navy units doing exercises in the general area. The level of hostility, type of aggressive narrative control, and how key US outlets were already standing ready to suppress certain details made it suspicious from the start.

The US uses the same playbook again and again, makes people suspicious even when the US might not have been involved in events.

You would be surprised what you can do. Most of the time the only things that prevent people from doing actions like this are societal convention or the feeling that you have too much to lose. These fears are compounded by copaganda that convinces you that detectives will ultimately find out that it was you that committed the act. The truth is that anyone who is knowledgeable and possesses certain resources can perform acts like this with only a small group of people and get away with it, maybe not always with a clean record though.

I mean it's still a state. Lot easier to forge all kinds of documents and get stuff if you'rea already a state.

i think we're capable of more than we think