No one saw it coming, because that was precisely the plan. While half the planet looked toward the Pacific, waiting for an escalation in Guam, the real hunters silently crossed the Atlantic, heading for Iran. In what has already been dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer—a war ode with a Hollywood name—the United States carried out the first tactical bombing of the Iranian regime’s most heavily protected nuclear bunkers.
According to the official version, confirmed by General Dan Caine in an unusual and detailed press conference, the operation lasted 18 hours of flight in each direction, involved seven B-2 bombers, more than 125 support aircraft, multiple aerial deceptions, and synchronization so perfect that even disbelief seems part of the script.
But what are they really telling us?
The attack, according to the Department of Defense, was not only successful: it was exemplary. The numbers sound like something out of a war video game: 14 GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs dropped on the Fordo and Natanz facilities, two dozen Tomahawk missiles fired from the Arabian Sea toward Isfahan, and not a single visible resistance from Iran. As if the Persian theocracy had turned off its radars and sent its planes to sleep. Or as if it had tacitly accepted that it cannot defend the indefensible.
And yet, something doesn’t add up.
Because while General Caine details millimetric timelines and “approximate” flight maps, Tehran minimizes damage, hides images, and refuses to even confirm how many facilities were affected. Collateral damage? No mention. Civilian casualties? Silence. Immediate reaction? None.
It seems that both sides of the conflict are playing from the same script, albeit in different languages.
Was this an act of defense? A preemptive response? Or simply a demonstration that if someone can still strike without the other even raising a fist, that someone is still the United States?
“An incredibly sophisticated operation that no other country could have pulled off,” said defense expert Stacie Pettyjohn. Loosely translated: we still rule the skies and the underground. Because the bombs used are not conventional: they pierce 60 feet of concrete or 200 feet of earth before detonating. Only one nation possesses such ordnance. And only one has used it.
It is also the official debut of the new power axis in Washington: Trump, Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth, all in the Situation Room at midnight, like a scene from House of Cards. Only this time the drama was real. And the consequences, even more so.
The bombing coincided with an alleged military escalation in Guam and rising tensions between Israel and Iran. Coincidence? Hardly. Israel didn’t even need to launch an F-16. It only needed to watch. Because air supremacy over Iran was already guaranteed. This time, the dirty work was done by Washington. Coordination or delegation? In modern geopolitics, those lines no longer matter.
“Israeli domination of Iranian airspace,” experts repeat. But it was the Pentagon that executed the hammer blow. And that implies something deeper: if this operation was tolerated—and not responded to—by Iran, it means its scope for action is exhausted. Or that it is already negotiating at another table.
Washington declares victory. Trump proclaims the “end of the Iranian nuclear program” and calls it the cleanest and most precise operation in modern military history. But not even a bomb, no matter how penetrating, can bury a nuclear ambition that has been brewing underground and under pride for decades. If the goal was to set back Iran’s atomic clock, they may have succeeded. But if the goal was to stop it completely, more than technology is needed: it requires history, agreements, and will.
For now, the only thing truly clear is that the clock has started ticking in another direction. One where it’s no longer a question of whether Iran can build a bomb, but rather how many times the United States is willing to prevent it.
And that, in global terms, is much more worrying.
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