By Theodosis Pipis
At the present moment the number of Iranian victims of terrorism has skyrocketed in accordance with the unprovoked and downright psychopathic war launched against the country by the United States and Israel on 28 February.
More than 3,000 Iranians have been killed in the assault, including over 1,400 civilians. The administration of US President Donald Trump has unleashed an incoherent litany of excuses for why the Iranian government must be taken out, with Trump singlehandedly staging one of the most impressive cases of emotional projection in history: “They’re sick people. They’re mentally ill. Sick people. They are angry. They are crazy. They are sick.”
This has become the narrative emanating from the west regarding the justification for the attack on Iran. There is no apology for the almost fifty years of theocratic and despotic rule that the Iranian people have been suffering since 1979. The only response they have gotten from the pain they have endured for almost 50 years has been the intensive bombardment of the population by governments such as Israel and the United States. There is no excuse and is yet another blatant violation of international law by both governments.
Western narrative
Among the very first casualties of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran were the more than 170 people, most of them schoolgirls, massacred in an attack on an elementary school in the city of Minab. Needless to say, one can imagine the seething uproar that would have ensued had Iran managed to kill even one American or Israeli schoolgirl.
In Minab, on the other hand, US media outlets did their best to refrain from reporting too extensively on the incident until it became absolutely unavoidable, while conservative lobbyist Matt Schlapp offered his own utterly charming two cents by suggesting that the girls were better off dead than “alive in a burka”.
One pet accusation that US officials delight in invoking as proof of Iran’s alleged terroristic orientation is the “Death to America” slogan that frequently features at Iranian political rallies as though it is somehow more of a crime to pronounce these few words in opposition to US foreign policy and imperialism, than it is to physically sow death and destruction globally.
Speaking purely on facts, Iran is not the one that has spent more than two years fuelling Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip with billions upon billions of dollars The official death toll in Gaza has surpassed 72,000, although the true number is undoubtedly astronomically higher, when taking into account unaccounted for individuals and POWs.
As Donald Trump and his ally Benjamin Netanyahu denounce the Iranian regimes leadership as the face terrorism and terror, it is them, in fact, that having been releasing terror in Gaze, the West Bank and Lebanon, a combined death toll which soon will rise to over 100,000 and a figure of almost 6 million displaced individuals since October 2023.
People of Iran
There is no denying that the true victims here are the people of Iran, and we have neglected them as the spotlight falls on the powerful clash between Israel, the US and Iran.
The few images emerging from Iran demonstrate the state the country is in, and the civilians are the ones bearing strikes both from external enemies and from their own despotic regime. Yet little is shared on the lived experience of the people of Iran. There has been an internet blackout for almost a month, which means that people are completely without a voice to the rest of the world. Assets are confiscated by the ruling regime for anyone who is deemed to have supported or sympathised with anti-establishment protests or activities. Shootings and executions are increasingly being carried out to anyone who is reported to be anti-government.
The irony? These are the people which the United States and Israel claim to be fighting this war for; however they are twofold victims, both of Israeli American bombing and domestic repression.
And as President Trump threatens to “obliterate Iran’s energy facilities if a deal is not struck shortly” we need to look at who will continue suffering. As Israelis sit comfortably in their homes and their leadership is ready to demolish Beirut as they did with Gaza, and as the United States look to continue bombing Iran, the people who are thirsty for regime change and for democracy are the ones being indirectly targeted.
