Watching Iran: Paralyzed at Dawn
5:30 a.m. I emerge into consciousness—hazy, alert, terrified by the thought that in the three hours of fragile sleep I managed, I may have lost a friend back home. Israel has launched a sudden and staggering military assault on Iran. The full scope of the operation remains unknown, but the target is unmistakable: the strike began in the heart of Tehran, a city of over ten million people—seventeen million including its vast sprawl. For many of us, this is the moment we’ve feared for decades: that the shadow of war, long hovering at the edge of imagination, would one day cross the threshold into reality. Now it has.
