Trump literally bombed Iran a few weeks ago and got away with it on the international stage.

What false flag do you need?

The whole point is the bluster and saber-rattling. Outside of a couple neocon freaks like John Bolton, most voters just want to hear tough talk and maybe see a couple explosions to be reminded that the military still exists and to be reassured that the president isn't a bleeding heart pushover. But they don't actually care at all about the state of the world. Take any stat about Iran and change it 10x in either direction and they wouldn't know the difference. It's only when something happens, especially when it's relevant to something they actually care about, like the team sports of domestic politics, that they care. Full scale ground invasions are kinda cringe because you're actually committing, it's coming on too strong, it's like saying, "I love you" on a first date.

This mentality is ignorant, chauvinistic, and psychotic, but if you want to understand the average voter and what US politicians are trying to appeal to, you have to set aside any kind of serious analysis and adopt a framework of someone who doesn't really understand foreigners as human and is averse to learning new things or engaging in complex questions. Keep it simple, keep it 👊🇺🇸🔥

Here is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. All the .world libs are fully on board with denouncing the leader of Syria and calling for maintaining sanctions even though it's our guy who we put there, the guy who of you didn't support, you were a redfash tankie who needed to be banned and deplatformed! But then they see a post on Twitter framing him as bad and bashing Trump and they're totally down with that. These people are deeply unserious and don't actually care about Syria at all. And a significant chunk of Americans are as bad if not worse than them.

Open war with Iran would be very bad for the US. It's not a country that can just be invaded the same way the US has dealt with its foes for the last 70 years. A causus belli is moot if there's going to be US fleets at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and a collapse in global oil production. No amount of "they attacked us" is going to justify that conflict to the Wall Street, the international community, or the US public.

For the US, invading Iran is a question of "is there a US government (President) willing to be remembered as the one that oversaw the collapse of the empire?"

echoing all the "they can just do the thing without pretense" comments, they didn't even do a convincing lie about iran's nuclear program or send someone to the UN with a vial of bullshit.

I think we wouldn't actually need to. If we wanted to just go in they would just go in pre-emptiveivltly. Who would stop them? Who would listen to the complaints?

They don't because we couldn't win that war. We might even lose enough material for it to count as a loss. However we for sure couldn't accomplish meaningful strategic goals though force of arms

It would be an unnecessary and unwelcome action.

The United States can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. It will be rationalize after the fact. If the government harnesses the entirety of para-state media power to justify a war against Iran (ie, with a false flag or a WMD esque discourge) then it 'loses control' and has to put boots on the ground. Or fold.

The forever war is already being waged. It is all across the middle east and they only just now collapsed Syria after 14 years of hybrid warfare. Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Yemen are all perennial targets of the forever war.

False flags are a resource sink (money, time, organization) with very uncertain end results. Will the public buy it? And for how long? If you get found out, how bad is the blowback gonna be? It's far easier to wait for a genuine attack to come to you and surprise shock oh no, you've just so happened to be caught unawares!

That's as conspiracy brained as I let myself get about . One of those, Never Let a Tragedy Go to Waste moments. Maaaaaaybe some agents or agencies or elected officials heard rumblings about what was gonna happen and just looked the other way, but either way it was a genuine terrorist operation.

Why drag yourself into a persistent war when you can just drop some bombs and wave some flags every now and then to satisfy the American bloodlust without causing war-weariness?

They were going to but the CIA agent responsible for installing the bomb on thr aircraft carrier bumped into the deep cover state department asset trying to smuggle drones onboard and they both fell overboard and drowned.

Something vaguely as dumb as this is actually possible. Maybe Trump didn't like their proposals and said to wait a week and he basically forgot about the whole thing. Maybe the ghouls that would try to do it anyways are in disarray because they're Heritage Foundation dummies. Maybe one of them planned on buying the decommissioned carrier and making it a private museum.

they are scared of a actually war vs Iran so they just prefere to trade a few missiles and strikes with Iran

The empire is struggling to keep up these days

Saving this post when this happens.

Because they would prefer to avoid a direct war. They'd prefer a Syria/Libya type situation of engineered moderate rebels and selective strikes to maximize chaos and breakdown. They already have Azerbaijan totally in the zionist/NATO pockets hosting their planes and harassing Russia just across the border which they can use to aid with arming these. They hope to inspire ethnic tensions to create an actual fall of Iran that's durable and removes it as any kind of a power player for decades.

1. They've established they don't need pretext anymore.

2. The CIA is washed.

Basically all parties involved want to look like righteous good guys. The ceasefire is so that they all can sell the conflict to their people when it starts up again.