Nigeria, June 23 -- It began with silence. Then the hum of distant machines. Then the kind of thunder that doesn't wait for rain.

Above Iran, under the cover of midnight, the sky turned against the earth. Fordow. Natanz. Isfahan. Places buried in rock and rhetoric. Places hardened not just by concrete but by pride. They were supposed to be untouchable. They were not.

The United States, alongside Israel, struck with the precision of anger rehearsed over decades. B-2 bombers flew like phantoms, invisible until it was too late. Submarine-launched missiles carved through airspace that, until that hour, had been only threatened. It was called Operation Midnight Hammer, a name with all the poetry of war and none of its remorse.

And then, the...