Plans were changed last minute because an opportunity arose to take out Iran's leader. It was obvious something was going to happen, but not what or when. The American war fleet deploying would've served as an effective containment strategy if the US military would do another simple kidnapping like they did in Venezuela.

The large protests passed their peaks a while ago. The American military has been deploying to the area for a while. This attack could've happened any day in the past weeks, or it could've taken another couple of weeks of shit flinging, slow escalation, and meaningless threats from Iran's government.

Somehow, someone still lost $500k against that bet. Not that kind of 'obvious' then.

Nah, it was the surf & turf in the chow hall.

To be fair, Trump usually chickens out.

But in this case I guess there wasn't enough pushback. And the thing that made it if not obvious certainly rather likely was the aircraft carrier movement which isn't exactly subtle, though very often just used for intimidation.

The thing which is at least a little surprising is the talk about aircraft carriers being very vulnerable to attack with drones / cheap missiles / etc. didn't materialize and if it were going to, Iran would be the one to realize it unless a full on world war were to erupt.