Am I a Mossad agent? I ask because the coincidences have reached a density that even I find unsettling, and in a region where coincidence is never permitted to exist as a category – where every event must be the product of a hidden hand, a Zionist plot, or a Masonic blueprint drawn in a basement beneath the Federal Reserve – I should probably get ahead of the accusation before it arrives.

Yesterday, Monday, I published an article on the Times of Israel Blogs in which I described Ali Larijani strolling through Tehran during the Quds Day rally, taking selfies with President Pezeshkian, dismissing the ongoing bombardment as a sign of “desperation,” and mocking US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with an Epstein jab delivered with the confidence of a man who believed himself untouchable.

I compared the spectacle, in detail, to Saddam Hussein’s final public appearance in Baghdad’s Al-A’zamiyah neighborhood on April 9, 2003 – the waving, the embracing of strangers, the performative invincibility – and noted that the man who walked among adoring crowds was found, eight months later, in a spider hole near Tikrit, blinking at a flashlight. I wrote, in the article’s closing line: “Saddam walked the streets of Baghdad too. The hole in the ground came later.”

Today, Tuesday, Israel announced that Ali Larijani was killed overnight in a targeted airstrike on a hideout apartment in Tehran, alongside his son. Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed the strike. The IDF described Larijani as “the de facto leader” of the Islamic Republic. A senior Israeli official told reporters there was “no chance he survived.” A handwritten note was published on Larijani’s social media accounts – undated, on an unrelated matter – in what appeared to be a failed attempt at proof of life. The man who took selfies on Friday was dead by Tuesday.

Here is the detail that made me pause: I had originally planned to write the article on Sunday night, but decided to postpone it until Monday. Israel, according to its own briefing, had originally planned the strike for Sunday night but postponed it to Monday. I delayed my article by one day. The........

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