I keep going back to the F-15 shootdown in early April. Trump went completely insane and began issuing genocidal threats to Iran. The ceasefire that was arranged a few days later is still holding. This event was
the true turning point in the war.
So what happened ? Well we are still trying to get the information, but the big picture is that Mr Trump had been sold this war as an easy victory by Netanyahu and despite all the setbacks, was still listening to him in early April. The final blunder by Trump was to green light an operation to directly attack the main Iranian nuke facility that was holding their enriched uranium, by using ground forces to collapse the entrance tunnels themselves and sealing off the whole facility for years, rather than just attacking the tunnel entrances using aircraft. This was an operation the Israelis had been encouraging the US to carry out since the Obama era, and had been described by Obama officials as "crazy".
The two below Substack articles have, IMO, the best information and analysis on why the F-15 pilot rescue was more likely a cover story for a failed Special Forces raid on Pickaxe Mountain
The airstrip was picked, the CIA was running info campaigns, the aircrafts went down, the plan went down in flames like a Chinook
pawglvr69.substack.com
The sequence of events that unfolded between April 2nd and April 5th, 2026, over central Iran represents one of the most complex and controversial military episodes in recent memory.
nitishastra.substack.com
It was after the failure of this Op that Trump seemed to finally realize how badly he had been misled by Netanyahu and the neocons into this war. They have been sidelined ever since.