In a stunning display of the sort of arithmetic that would make a Victorian mortician weep into his gin, the combined forces of the United States and Israel have launched an operation in Iran so devastating that the precise number of souls dispatched to the great beyond may remain a statistical phantom. This is not war as your grandfather knew it, a gentlemanly affair of cannonballs and cavalry charges. This is war as a spreadsheet, war as a press release, war as a footnote in a classified document that no one will ever read until some intrepid historian with a death wish and a Freedom of Information request digs it out of a mouldy archive in 2075.
Let us begin with the numbers, such as they are. Thousands, we are told. Thousands of Iranians, presumably. But in the fog of war, the fog of propaganda, and the fog of sheer bloody-mindedness that accompanies any state-sanctioned slaughter, the true figure may never be known. It's a bit like trying to count the number of olives in a martini after you've already drunk the martini. You know there were some, but exactly how many? A mystery wrapped in an enigma, deep-fried in geopolitical cynicism.
We are asked to believe that these strikes were 'surgical.' I have had surgery. It involved a man in a mask, a bright light, and a great deal of personal discomfort. This operation, by contrast, was performed by drones piloted from air-conditioned trailers in Nevada, dropping precision munitions on targets that may or may not have been military. The collateral damage, they call it. Collateral damage: a phrase so euphemistic it would make a Victorian mortician blush. These are not numbers on a screen. These are people. People with names, with families, with dreams of a world that does not involve being vaporised by a Hellfire missile while they sleep.
The great tragedy of modern journalism is that we are not allowed to report the truth. We are allowed to report what we are told, which is not quite the same thing. So I will tell you what I know, which is that the war on Iran, like most wars, is a catastrophe dressed up as a necessity. A catastrophe for the people who live there, and a catastrophe for the moral compass of the nations who rain down death from the sky. The true toll may never be known, but that does not mean it does not exist. It exists in the empty chairs at dinner tables, in the wails of mothers, in the rubble of homes that were never a threat to anyone.
And what of the cost to the aggressors? The billions of dollars spent on bombs that could have built schools, hospitals, libraries. The souls of the pilots who press the button. The credibility of a nation that claims to stand for freedom while it douses another in fire. These are not numbers that can be counted. They are losses that cannot be measured.
So here is my report: thousands dead. Thousands more wounded, orphaned, displaced. A truth that may never be fully known. But it is a truth that will haunt us all, if we have the courage to look.
