Promises were made. Thousands died, more will. Someone made a pile of cash.

On January 2, Trump took to Truth Social to promise rescue for Iran’s protesters: “We are locked and loaded and ready to go!”

No, we weren’t. We had no aircraft carriers near Iran, and our squadrons of fighter jets were parked across the US and Europe.

Buoyed by hope, the protesters turned out in greater numbers. Tehran resident told the Washington Post, “Our eyes were fixed on the sky, like something will happen. He’ll hit now.”

But rescue didn’t come.  A brutal crackdown did, with authorities escalating to live ammo and military-grade weapons on January 8.  The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), based in Washington, says at least 7000 Iranians were killed in the protests. The near-total internet blackout makes verification difficult — but other organizations number the dead as high as 30,000.

Former UN war crimes prosecutor Payam Akhavan called it “one of the worst mass killings in contemporary world history.”

Operation Epic Fury began on Saturday. Why wait so long? Why attack at all, when in November the President announced that June’s Operation Midnight Hammer had “obliterated Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity”?

Israel. Netanyahu had been arguing for regime change in Iran for months, according to a New York Times (NYT) analysis of Trump’s decision-making process. But in mid-January, Israel wasn’t ready either; Netanyahu asked Trump to wait until its defenses were ready.

Not long after a February 11 meeting with Netanyahu in the Oval Office, Trump ended talk of negotiation on nuclear capabilities with Iran. On February 28, the skies over Iran finally lit up.

No surgical strike

Six American soldiers have been killed so far. So have at least 740 Iranian civilians. On Monday the US State Department urged Americans to leave 15 Middle Eastern countries, but Iran has bombed the Dubai airport — the world’s busiest, through which much of the traffic from Europe to Asia flows. Most of our embassies in the Middle East are closed.

Iran is bombing airports, ports, hotels, US embassies, residential areas and critical infrastructure across the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of travelers are still stranded. The Strait of Hormuz, passageway for a fifth of the world’s oil supply and a third of its liquefied natural gas, is controlled by Iran. It closed the day after Operation Epic Fury began. Cruise passengers are stuck, too.

And…less oil means higher oil prices, higher everything prices because everything must be transported. Get ready for inflation to come back. (Maybe it’s a good thing the US commandeered Venezuela’s oil — ?)

Don’t worry, someone made money

People are dead, more are dying. People are stuck in countries that were safe but now have their airports and hotels being bombed. The crisis threatens the world’s fuel supply and economy.

A handful of people (or all one person, spreading the money around in different accounts) made lots of money guessing — knowing? — when the US would attack Iran. On Monday Forbes reported “insane insider-looking trading on the Iran markets” on Polymarket, a predictive market (28% of bettors now think France, the UK or Germany will strike Iran this month, fwiw). Six “wallets” collectively bet that the US would strike Iran by February 28. They all did so less than 24 hours before the strikes. The bets paid out $1.2 million. One turned $61K into $493K, a return of 821%. Two made trades within seconds of each other, and also placed small bets on nearby dates — “decoy” trades meant to disguise insider knowledge.

A wallet called “Magamyman” bet on a different question, whether Khamenei would be killed before the US strikes occurred. Israeli bombs killed Supreme Leader earlier in the day. That payout was $553,000.

Impossible to know who they were

The Biden-era DOJ and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) were both investigating Polymarket’s operations. The Trump administration dropped those cases right after Donald Trump Jr. invested millions in Polymarket and joined its advisory board.

There is no public evidence linking the “insane insider-trading” wallets to any government official or political figure.

Due to public outcry this week, Polymarket has removed long-running betting contracts on the likelihood of a nuclear weapon detonating.

Betting and corruption. A government’s massacre of its own people beyond imagining. Global chaos.

Promises were made. And broken. Was it worth it?

Sources:

• CBS News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gas-prices-rise-oil-prices-inflation-iran-gasbuddy/
• Coindesk https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/03/04/polymarket-shelves-nuclear-markets-after-outcry
• Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/boazsobrado/2026/03/02/fresh-wallets-mae-12m-on-polymarket-hours-before-iran-airstrikes/
• HRANA https://www.hra-iran.org/antipgovernment-student-protests-spread-to-more-iranian-universities/
• PBS https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-u-s-pledge-for-help-goes-unfulfilled-iran-uprising-meets-brutal-crackdown
• NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/state-department-urges-americans-mideast-depart-strikes-continue-rcna261313
• New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/us/politics/trump-war-iran-israel.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
• The White House https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
• Truth Social https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115824439366264186
• Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/01/19/iran-trump-attack-protesters-killed/