Early Friday morning, as Iranian generals who’d spent years threatening Israel with destruction still slept, Israel launched a surprise attack. Its precision strikes damaged nuclear facilities and killed military officials deep within Iranian territory. Soon after, we heard stories of Mossad agents and Israeli drone bases hidden behind enemy lines.

So ho…

Early Friday morning, as Iranian generals who’d spent years threatening Israel with destruction still slept, Israel launched a surprise attack. Its precision strikes damaged nuclear facilities and killed military officials deep within Iranian territory. Soon after, we heard stories of Mossad agents and Israeli drone bases hidden behind enemy lines.

So how did they do it?

Why did these seasoned Iranian officers—veteran warriors, intelligence chiefs, regime survivors—lower their guard so completely? Did Benjamin Netanyahu read Donald Trump better than the Iranians? How did Israel achieve strategic surprise? And can it achieve lasting victory?

Join Bari Weiss and Michael Doran, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, as they delve into these questions—and take yours.

They’ll be going live at 6:30 p.m ET. Join us here and on our homepage.

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Welcome back! It’s been a big week in culture. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra has a new director. The president went to the Kennedy Center to watch Les Miz. The Tony Awards told all America what to see on Broadway this summer. But all I can think about is pop stars.

Our office got loud this week after the pop queen Sabrina Carpenter revealed her new, not-so-subtle album cover. It shows Carpenter in a short black dress and sky-high heels, on her hands and knees, her thick blonde tresses gripped by a faceless man in a suit and black dress shoes. It’s like he’s walking her, as if she’s a pet. There was an additional image, in case the first one wasn’t clear enough: a close-up of a dog wearing a collar that reads “Man’s Best Friend,” which is also the title of the new album, out this August.

The internet wasn’t sure what to make of the album cover—Elle called it “cheeky,” but fans, unsure why Carpenter was at a man’s feet, urged her to “get up,” or else chided the singer for “setting women back 100 years” and “promoting degradation.” Still others claimed she was being “subversive” and “empowering.”

The Free Press newsroom (the younger half, at least) was divided too: Was Sabrina making a point about her own submissive sexuality? Or the perversion of the people looking at her? Or feminism? Were we just shocked because the 26-year-old used to be a child star on the Disney Channel? (Carpenter appeared in a Disney series, made a bunch of made-for-TV movies, and was signed to Disney’s record label.) Or was she just trolling, and we were all falling for it? Was it demeaning to women, and did that matter? Did the fact that it had people talking make it provocative enough to be art? And if so, was it any good?

There was a meme that was popular when I was in college 15 years ago that went like this: “Social life, enough sleep, good grades: Pick two.”

This was the self-pitying, self-aggrandizing battle cry of the striver class, in which I grew up. I’m from upper Manhattan, and I went to an uber-elite private school attended by the children of banking CEOs, Trumps, Schumers; it was unthinkable that I or any of my classmates would find ourselves among the 62 percent of Americans without a college degree.

To be part of this class is to have absorbed the idea that—while there was a time when the highest rung on the social ladder was the “idle rich”—today it is high status to be either extremely busy or, at least, giving the impression of it; in college, friends I visited at Columbia and Yale would talk about how much time they’d spent at the library. These days, a lot of my former classmates are elite members of the “laptop class”: They write politicians’ speeches, they move millions around on Wall Street, they work as lawyers honing major corporate deals. Since school, our values haven’t changed: we still humblebrag about how we’re too busy to sleep, or see friends, except now we’re trying to get promotions, not good grades. We boast about staying up until 3 a.m. working, but on a brief or an account, not an essay. Signaling membership in the striver class means discussing life as a just barely solvable logistics problem.

As I write these words, Israel is under attack by Iran. All of my friends in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are huddled with their families in bomb shelters. Some alarming eyewitness video showed missile impacts and interceptions in Tel Aviv and the surrounding area.

Iran promised a “bitter, painful” response—to what extent that promise will be fulfilled is what all Israelis and everyone concerned for those at the front line of the free world are wondering tonight.

It’s too soon to say how this will ultimately all shake out. What we can say with confidence is that this is a seismic, world-historical event. And it’s one we are built to cover.

The Free Press has access to the best historians, analysts, and reporters in the world. And today, we’re bringing them straight to your inbox: Niall Ferguson with the big-picture historical perspective; Michael Doran on how Israel pulled off what he calls the “ultimate deception”; Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad on how those who hunted her are finally becoming the hunted; Matthew Continetti on the political dimensions of this strike; and, from Israel, Amit Segal on Bibi Netanyahu’s masterstroke. Also: a thought-provoking conversation between Haviv Rettig Gur and Eli Lake.

And there will be much more in the coming days. So to support the work we do, please become a paid subscriber today:

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Let’s dive in.

Before we go, I want to wish a happy Father’s Day to all our readers. We live in dangerous times, but I hope you all get a chance to kick back with your families this weekend. And please keep your eyes peeled for some wonderful essays from some Free Press fathers this weekend, including Joe Nocera and Peter Savodnik. I guarantee they’ll make you cry. And if you’re still searching for the perfect Father’s Day gift, how about a Free Press subscription?

Have a wonderful weekend. And say a prayer for peace in Jerusalem.

After TACO, now BDCO: Bibi Doesn’t Chicken Out.

Early Friday morning, Israel launched a historic wave of attacks against Iran—the latest phase of the Israel-Iran war that effectively began on October 7, 2023.

Israel’s Operation Rising Lion included both air strikes and a wave of Mossad-run assassinations across Iran that effectively decapitated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Israel Defense Forces claim to have executed hundreds of strikes spread over five waves in the first phase of the operation, targeting Iran’s military infrastructure, its nuclear sites, and its command structure. As many as 200 fighter jets were involved. The Israelis built a drone base inside Iran to strike the enemy from within, as if to say: Anything Ukraine can do, we can do better.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei declared that Israel would receive a “bitter, painful” response and that has now begun. As of this writing, Israelis were in their bomb shelters. At least one missile has exploded in downtown Tel Aviv.

How to interpret this seismic event—and unfolding war?

President Trump stands with Israel in its campaign against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Parts of his MAGA coalition do not.

The split is revealing. Internal strife within the Republican Party over foreign policy is well known. Indeed, the greatest and most consequential divide on the right today is over America’s role in the world and the use of force abroad. But the limits of the noninterventionist, “restraint” faction within the Trump administration have not been tested.

Until now.

I’ve spent the past four years of my life being hunted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. They sent agents to kidnap me from my home in New York. They hired assassins to kill me on American soil. They even followed me to Davos, Switzerland, where I had to be helicoptered out from my hotel.

If not for the FBI’s protection—and the more than 21 safe houses I have shuttled between over the past few years—I might not be alive to write these words.

So yes, this moment is personal. But it is also far bigger than me.

They died in their own beds. Hossein Salami and Ali Shamkhani—Iran’s most senior military officers and the stewards of Iran’s nuclear weapons program—had spent years threatening Israel with destruction. They issued taunts, organized terrorist attacks, and orchestrated, since October 7, the encirclement of the Jewish state in a ring of fire of their terror proxies. And they knew—without the slightest illusion—that Israel had the capability and resolve to kill them.

This cohort saw the Israeli air force bury Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah in his bunker, hundreds of meters beneath the streets of Beirut. They saw Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh vaporized in a presidential guesthouse—in Tehran, no less. Yet on Thursday night, they came home as usual and went to sleep—unguarded, unworried, carefree. Like insurance salesmen and bank tellers following their daily routines, it never occurred to them that they might not wake in the morning.

But they didn’t.

The world woke up today to a changed Middle East. Israel struck key nuclear and military facilities throughout Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed retaliation. And Donald Trump urged Iran to agree to a nuclear deal.

As the dust settles in Tehran, we’re left with many questions. Can Iran mount a major counterattack? Did Israel’s strikes secure its safety? …