Last Wednesday, June 18th, three days before the US dropped ‘bunker-buster’ bombs and fired Tomahawk missiles on Iranian nuclear facilities, I posted on Twitter that it looked to me like the decision to enter the Iran-Israel war had already been made, and that all the talk of diplomatic-this and two-weeks-that was just for show.
Today I want to show you why I thought that.
I want to show you what ‘mobilizing narrative support’ looks like, as measured by our revolutionary Perscient technology and as understood by someone who has spent the past 35 years studying, writing and teaching about this stuff.
I think we all recognize how much planning and preparation goes into the important, risky decisions of our personal lives, like getting married or choosing a college or finding a job, and it’s weird to me that we often don’t seem to recognize that governments, companies and institutions do an immense amount of planning and preparation for their important, risky decisions, too. I suppose we’ve been trained by a Hollywood version of decision making, especially White House decision making a la Aaron Sorkin, where President Bartlett gathers his team in the Situation Room and through a series of penetrating questions and keen historical observations is able to either avert nuclear Armageddon or launch a delicate military counter-maneuver that opens the door for a diplomatic solution, all in the course of a single tense evening, despite some trigger-happy generals and a ticking clock of some sort.
This just isn’t the way this stuff works. Particularly when it comes to going to war, which is pretty much the riskiest thing that any set of national leaders can undertake from a domestic political perspective, making that initial move is something that is discussed and planned, in the immortal words of Pete Hegseth, for months and weeks.
“This is a plan that took months and weeks of positioning and preparation, so that we could be ready when the president of the United States called. It took a great deal of precision. It involved misdirection and the highest of operational security.”
Pete Hegseth, June 22nd Pentagon briefing
And that’s just the go-decision. The war plans themselves, like in this case, have typically been in the works for years.
There was nothing ‘imminent’ about the Iranian nuclear threat, no matter what Mike Johnson and other GOP Congressional apologists for scrapping the War Powers Act might say, at least when their guy is in the White House. Or certainly not imminent in the sense of a Jack Bauer 24 episode.
No, the way this stuff works is that you start to think that a military initiation or escalation might be necessary three or four months before you decide to actually go for it, and you let your generals and admirals know that they should dust off the plans and the options that they’ve been keeping on file somewhere. At this point you’re just thinking seriously about it and there are lots of discussions and lots of back-channeling and lots of debate. Maybe it happens and maybe it doesn’t, but there’s an inertia to this process so I’d say that something happens more times than not. The actual decision to initiate is made four or five weeks before the Marines land or the bombs drop or whatever, and then you spend those four or five weeks getting everything into position. Arranging your military assets is a big part of that four to five week preparation time, but an equally important part is arranging your Narrative assets – your influence over media coverage of the rationale for war. That said, it’s important not to peak too soon with your war-drum beating, so while you’ve been building the narrative case throughout the entire process, even when you were just thinking seriously about it, you only start the go-to-war media blitz a week or two before the actual fighting starts.
The narrative record of our attack on Iran is a perfect example of this prototypical getting-to-war experience.
Go-to-War Iran Narratives in Trump II Administration, January 20 – June 20, 2025 (z-scored)
You’re looking at a 5-month chart of the semantic density of five go-to-war rationales (what we call semantic signatures) [1] concerning Iran, as measured across millions of news articles, blogs and transcripts. The vertical y-axis shows the cumulative ‘z-scores’ of these five go-to-war narratives, which is best interpreted as a measure of how unusual this level of media activity and semantic density is. A z-score is the equivalent of a standard deviation measure, so when you see that ‘The time for diplomacy is over’ narrative has a z-score of 8 over the past week and a half, that means it is an 8-standard deviation event … i.e. a one-of-a-kind event.
What you’re seeing in this chart is a
Good article Ben- one additional thought I have is that the decision to go to war against Iran could have been made even before april- Iran had already tried to assassinate Trump before his corronation.
This always seemed a bit of a suicidal attempt on a very personally vengeful figure that doesn’t quite make sense unless they had reasons to believe he was bad for their regime.
Plus it’s not like he didn’t assassinate miltiary leaders on his first term and trying his best to escalate as much as he could have done back then.
Who know’s what thoughts lie in his head. But maybe he was following the tried and true playbook of republican presidents before him as a war time president being the best for ratings and one where he gets to play the biggest hands in the geopolitical card game. Who knows?
Very interesting. Does this have implications for how the Trump administration works in other areas as well? Meaning, a ‘conventional’ critique of Trump and his policies is that he is chaotic and changes his mind frequently. But you are laying out the case that this particular major decision was made months ago and stuck to, and that a ‘normal’ mobilizing narrative support operation followed, even as Trump’s public statements during that time period reinforced the ‘Trump is a chaotic loose cannon’ critique (which I think based on your analysis now supports the ‘no, he is doing this on purpose to keep people off balance’ counter argument).
Might a similar dynamic be taking place with Trump’s tariff plan (or lack thereof)? Meaning, he actually does have a grand plan and end goals about what he wants to achieve, and the constant verbal threats, changes to rates, attacks, feints, etc etc are designed to throw people off balance, rather than a sign of internal chaos and uncertainty?
I think he personally doesn’t have any plan that doesn’t include him and his dynasty gaining more power or more money. His actions via Trump shit coins where he collects billions in bribe money and Qatari aeroplanes shows his incentives quite clearly.
However all of this theatrics and brazen kleptocracy can hide strategic intent for the people pupetting his actions- he has effectively democratised US foreign policy via his shitcoin, so you could theoretically create a shadow cabinet that could get the US aparatus to do their biddings via capital flows. E.g. Netanahyu doesn’t have to worry about optics if he can effectively leverage Trump into helping him in his war via Trump shitcoins.
So imo, there is definitely people behind him who have plans. They could be using him as an “useful idiot” for their plans to supplant prior archetypes of morality and fundemental rights of human beings, he’s a very good lightening rod for the hate even though he can’t do anything if people don’t follow his orders.
I don’t think it was ever really a question that he didn’t have a plan, it was just whether these plans were ever going to be benefitting the american public or going to be trillions in tax cuts to the ultra net worth individuals who installed him or the countries who were willing to bribe him.
Another interesting thing about “Iran is days away from having a nuke” is that it doesn’t appear to move much at all after the reporting from the NYT that they had reached the 60% enrichment threshold, but that it does move along with more general stories about hostilities with Iran. Shows the disconnect between the underlying factual nature of the evidence vs its utility in mobilizing support for war.
All lot of conjecture - everywhere trying to get my attention on this matter…persuade me.
The only questions i have for which i don’t find any real factual discussion:
-what is 60% enriched uranium good for? Is it necessary for nuclear power? A nuclear submarine/ship? Xray machines? Is it a product they produce in order to sell?
-How long does it take to go from unenriched to 60%? 60% to further level of refinement, say 90%?
-What’s the purpose of further enrichment, beyond 60%?
-Is it “normal” to put the enrichment process in a remote area way under ground?
I have no idea.
Seems like answers to those questions may provide a better picture as Iran’s purpose with all of this and why all the fuss especially over the last 15 years (obama deal, secret cash shipments, Trump ripping up agreement, biden re signing agreement, bunker busters…)
Managing chaotic situations might be a strength for him, so he gravitates in that direction. IMO everything needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes there is a grand plan, and sometimes there isn’t.
It’s to his benefit of calculating for personal remuneration to keep us guessing, which media of all types loves to assist us in doing
Nice signature analysis, Ben - love the visual!
Along with the whole “I’ll decide within the next two weeks” head fake, I wonder how Gabbard’s counter-narrative fits into the picture? Calculated unbalancing move? Actual disssent? Or just a sideshow?
Might not even be worth spilling ink if it’s just her swan song.
60% is as close or as far as needed to say Iran is weeks or years away from weapon grade enrichment. It’s meaningless. They have been utilising the ambiguity of their nuclear program in much the same way as Trump is utilising his current Schroedinger’s tariffs. I also am not convinced that if they wanted a nuclear program, they couldn’t have achieved it by now.
Wow.
That helps add to my narrative interpretation of “they all suck most of the time”.
Not requiring the opposite to be true (albeit a strong preference) helps make everything more manageable.
That is many times more enriched than a reactor needs. IIRC yellow cake is about 5%.
Radium is used for medical isotopes.