alt Hacker NewsFolks, the President announced the attack and rough date ten days in advance.[1] He did the same exact thing in 2025, with strikes beginning on the 61st day after a 60-day deadline.[2]
This particular market wasn’t about the likelihood of a strike but the probability of radical success. It seems at least possible in the circumstances that the Iran Supreme leader chose his own fate, which was inherently predicable and also exactly what I seem to recall him publicly predicting, albeit without a strict deadline.[3]
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86yjnw4x49o
[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-says-he-g...
[3] https://www.malaysianow.com/news/2026/03/01/khamenei-killed-...
Replies
You are pretending like it was inevitable that negotiations would fail and that Trump wouldn’t chicken out. Those are the likely alternatives in the betting market.
I would argue that Trump probably wouldn’t have felt confident enough to do this if he wasn’t already running on a high after the Venezuela war going so well for him.
That gives me pause, given what he's been saying about Cuba recently...
The site you cite for [3] reads:
"Khamenei, the leader of the great nation of Iran, the freedom seekers of the world and the Islamic nations, has joined the highest paradise and reached his long-cherished wish of martyrdom in the holy month of Ramadan," said an announcement aired on Iranian state television.
Sounds to me like it was made up after the fact.