Its safe to assume a state's public goals are a lie, especially during a war.

My point wasn't that their stated goals can be met without a ground invasion, it was that a ground invasion fought only by Israel will be extremely difficult for them to win, if not impossible.

I'm not sure what your point is about death threats, or what threats you're referring to. Trump has pretty directly threatened Khamenei. The threats I remember seeing from Iran are always vague and pointed mostly at a desire for the Israeli and US governments to die - though dangerous statements to make, I wouldn't consider those death threats.

Don't misread me here as defending Iran, both sides in a war are to blame and the history of this problem goes back decades.

I was referring to the other comment's comments that we need to take iranian threats seriously.

However, if israel's goals are a lie -- the question is what they're hoping to achieve. Maybe they thought the US had the capacity to take out iran's nuclear capability and would use it, from the air; or would gamble on that. I'm doubtful.

Or they think they can ramp up the escalation ladder to a degree where the US is involved in a full-blown war that wrecks iran as a functional state. This makes most sense.

The combined defensive capability of western powers may be enough to protect israel during such a conflict, whilst the US/israel can wage a much more sustained offensive campaign.

Either way, going around bombing iran -- civilian areas, oil infrastructure, media companies -- has only one aim: escalation. They are trying to provoke iran into ever more escalatory responses.

One has to square israel's actions with what they could plausibly aim to achieve. Everything points towards climbing an escalation ladder towards a US-backed destruction of iran as a functional state.

This will, of course, cost the US greatly. However there's very little evidence israel has any regard for US blood or treasure.