Head Fake?

Well, March clearly wasn't a point-of-no-return date for action against Iran's nuclear facilities. Or if it was, we failed and nothing can be done now.

Even though events feel like a pre-conflict period more now than at any time in the past couple years, I can't rule out that we are doing with Iran what we did with Iraq prior to the invasion to gain an element of surprise--repeatedly ratchet up the prospects of action only to pull back. Ideally, our forces near Iran get in a better status to act with each ratchet up and we get the enemy used to these periodic upticks and dull their senses to these upticks.

Then at one of those ratchets up, instead of fading back we keep going and hit the nutballs hard.

This is really the only way to gain surprise in our 24/7 news environment.