Maybe something has changed or i'm missing something, but my understanding is that even without iCloud backup enabled, if you went through the "i forgot my pass

Maybe something has changed or i'm missing something, but my understanding is that even without iCloud backup enabled, if you went through the "i forgot my password" process they could remotely generate a new key and create new copies of all your iMessages encrypted with the new key. Which is effectively replicating exactly the attack that e2e is supposed to protect against.