Dear Yankel,
You left out 2a 2b 2c 2d 2e 2f 2g and so on. Which is almost all the other Rebbes and other Gedolim putting their weight on the Lubavitcher Rebbe being moshiach. And then they switched sides. Then and only then, did the Rebbe get into his cryptic statements that you called proclamations. You are missing a lot of nuance here. It is not theology. It is anthropology. And you left out the Crown Heights riots. And the battle over the TTY. Plus the current rift among the mechanchim.
Either you know little about Chabad from the inside, or you are deliberately subverting the narrative.
To put my question straight. Who do you think is behind all these machinations? Chabad is a large and loose group. What makes them so organized and who is pulling the strings?