It would be interesting to know the exact time of the publishing of this piece.
There’s four possibilities:
1. The most amazing coincidence in the history of journalism. Clue squared. The right guy (1 in a 1000) in the right place (1 in 100) on the exact right day (1 in 1000) with (almost) the right weapon (1 in 100). Basically a 1 in 10 billion chance.
2. The author had just heard what happened and updated his story just before publication. Unlikely because editing at the Times takes hours at least.
3. The NYT article was updated after publishing and the Post is mistaken (also unlikely).
4. A deep state operative didn’t want the strike to be successful and so arranged for this otherwise pointless story about hypersonic missiles to be published on short notice as a heads up. But he or she wasn’t privy to the exact timing of the strike (just knew it was coming) and so the article was too late to be noticed by the Iranians in time.
Hmmmm.... When was it published as "former" though, if this is the article that was originally published then the use of "former" would mean it would have to have been after the missile strike.
Does anyone have any idea if that word has been altered at all?