One explanation is that I'm seeing exactly what the Iranians are intended to see and so reacting as I should. Strategypage raises the issue of continually warning your foe about how you might strike:
On the other hand, surprise is best obtained by keeping your plans secret from the enemy. You want to hit your foe unexpectedly. Discussing openly that you are working on radical new techniques for attacking is giving the game away. Or is it? Maybe someone in the Pentagon has been paying close attention to what's going on inside Iran. The ruling clerical junta is composed of some very smart, and very insecure, people. There are also a lot of paranoid types. So bringing up Operation Checkmate, and its legendary capacity for creating unexpected tactics, is meant to freak out the easily frightened among the Iranian clerical establishment. Of particular interest will be what is said in private, and what Iranian military decisions that leads to.
I feel a bit better. And I have mentioned the need to make an enemy paranoid enough to crush.
I've also mentioned that repeated war scares could tend to lull the Iranians into seeing actual attack preparations as just more psychological warfare.
We could spook them into ineffectiveness and lull them into passivity with one information operation.
