Here’s my personal theory, updated in real time: this isn’t only about “Iran” as a target, it’s about finding an engine that creates momentum when your preferred domestic engine stalls.

Plan A was domestic. A deportation-centered enforcement buildout can function like a WPA-style jobs and spending program: hire at scale, expand detention capacity, contract transportation and logistics, staff security, medical, and legal processing, and build a whole support economy around the infrastructure. It’s not subtle. It’s expensive, labor-heavy, and politically tribal: the people most willing to take those jobs are the people already aligned with the project.

But that machine creates friction. Legal fights. Public outrage. Constant negative framing. Practical constraints. At some point, the effort stops being a smooth “we’re doing things” story and becomes a daily grind of resistance and bad optics. And when Plan A won’t run at full throttle, the need for a lever doesn’t disappear. Midterms don’t pause. Markets don’t wait. The attention economy doesn’t take a nap.

So you pivot to the lever that always works: foreign escalation. Air strikes instantly trigger procurement cycles and replacement orders. They spin up contractor logistics. They justify reserve activation. They bring back the whole national-security weather system: terror fears, proxy-war paranoia, emergency briefings, and wall-to-wall coverage. Whether you think it’s wise or reckless, it’s a narrative reset button with a very loud click.

And there’s an emotional accelerant people underrate: spite. When a leader feels blocked, mocked, denied credit, or refused the story they wanted to tell, “fine, then watch this” becomes policy energy. The subtext becomes: you could’ve let me do it my way at home. You didn’t. Now you get it my way abroad.

That’s my read. Not certainty, a theory about incentives, ego, and the eternal hunger of the momentum machine.