As our president threatens to erase civilizations, tells the Pope what Christianity is about, and shares AI images of himself as Jesus, it’s important to remember what’s happening in Iran is a real war with real victims, something easy to lose sight of amid all the absurdity.
A first-person account in al Jazeera reminds us of the human and animal suffering caused by war. Even when people aren’t physically impacted, the mental strain of living in a city under attack is considerable, and their poor animals have no idea what’s going on.
One thing you’ll rarely see on American networks is an acknowledgement that the vast majority of Iranians are just like us.
Before the war, they had open access to an uncensored internet. Despite the oppressive theocratic government, it’s easy for Iranians to get TV networks from outside their country. The Iranian regime was never as adept at controlling information as some of its contemporaries.
The people of Iran are overwhelmingly secular, fully aware of what’s happening, and they have long been sick of their government.
For them it must be a Farenheit 451 moment, watching footage of the bombing while explosions rumble around them. Survival is down to luck. The missile you see streaking toward your city on TV could be the one that hits your apartment building.
To remind us of what’s happening where the bombs are landing, here’s Sana, a 27-year-old woman from Tehran, describing the first night of the war:
“Seven or eight more explosions followed. They were bombing near Mehrabad airport, close to us. I genuinely thought I was going to die.
When I finally went back upstairs, my cat was hiding in the wardrobe, trembling. My family and boyfriend had been calling and texting, without response, for hours, watching the news reports about strikes near the airport and imagining the worst.“
I recommend reading the rest, if for nothing else than to be reminded that Sana is so normal, so much like us.
Header image of Tehran under attack at night via Wikimedia Commons
Pain In The Bud 
The “like” of course, is for your coverage of the story. I never “like”, or approve of any attacks, anywhere.
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I would never think that of you, Leah.
As for this story, it humanizes the people our “leaders” write off as collateral damage. We need more of that.
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I have been unhappy with bombing Iran. Americans will now have a terrible reputation as warlike people who enjoy killing innocent civilians. I feel sick about the 120 schoolgirls who died in the bombing of their school. I wish we’d just try to negotiate with Iranian leaders. At some point there may be retaliation. This war is what my 7th grade teacher called “actin’ ugly”. I wish we would just end the war now before there’s more death and destruction.
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Our Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they could see what a grotesque society of warmongers and ideological lemmings we’ve become, to the detriment of the world.
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Absolutly.
Human life ( or animal) has no value now compaired to money.
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The orange savior did not do this to help the people of Iran. Let’s get that straight. And like i said before, no one thinks about animals in the times of war. Nor do they care about children. You just have to look at the past. Nothing has changed. I was looking at that vile human Oppenheimer saying he did not care if his bomb hurt or killed innocent victims. Him saying that in a documentary.
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Oppenheimer was extremely sober about the bomb, the destruction it could cause and the way the world would inevitably change. He realized if he didn’t lead the project someone else would have.
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Do these people who order wars stop to consider that animals also are victimized? Maybe that realization might stop some of them?
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I mean, we’re talking about people who dropped bunker busters and white phosphorous on refugee camps.
They don’t care about human or animal life.
There was a story more than a year ago about an extremely rare Egyptian lynx that broke into an Israeli forward base and went after some soldiers. The lynx was starving because there were no more prey animals.
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I looked that up. Rare Egyptian Lynx seems to = caracal. After looking at some of the pictures of this cat, I started to imagine Buddy’s face superimposed on the caracal face with those large, tufted ears.
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Yeah it’s a sub-population of caracals, not distinct enough to be considered its own species, but with some differences compared to the main caracal population.
We all hear about the human death toll, which is horrible, but we don’t see enough about the impact on animals and the land.
So if Trump and Netanyahu get their wish to ethnically cleanse Gaza and turn it into some sort of resort area with golden statues of Trump and “big, beautiful hotels,” they won’t see it in their lifetimes.
I read an analysis that estimated a timeline of decades before it’s cleaned up and truly safe for people between the rubble, the estimated 200,000+ bodies buried underneath destroyed buildings, unexplored ordnance that requires specialist teams to remove, chemicals and other toxins, and accumulated waste due to the destroyed septic systems.
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Years ago I worked at a small architectural practice. There was the boss, the main architect, plus two other architects, including this very very strange guy from Italy (who turned out to be homeless. We found out he slept in the office), a draftsman, the secretary, and me, half backup secretary/half marketing person.
Then one of the two main architects left, and the boss hired this woman from Iran.
As weird as Florindo was, I was thinking an Iranian woman would be even worse.
How wrong I was.
She was 100% what we think of an ordinary, normal sane person. She referred to herself as Persian, not Iranian. On one of her vacations she went back to Iran, and complained to me what a pain in the ass it was to always have the full Iranian woman rig in her luggage. And she was required to wear it – the burqa, the hijab, whatever else – once she exited the plane.
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That’s what set off the second most recent slaughter of Iranians by their government.
The theocracy’s morality police beat a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, into a coma because some of her hair was visible under her hijab.
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Before my client joined FBI she was in a special unit in the military. Of course, not much she could tell me. With todays technology we could find the vile humans like Hamas and NOT bomb innocent people. My other client is a prominant Jewish author and is writing a book on these vile acts of killings. She is interviewing Jewish and Muslim people for the book.
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Thank you so much for this. I go to aljazeera regularly but missed this piece. Ramses will share it in his next post.
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It’s a good source for a side of news that we rarely ever see in US and UK media, and they have my respect for continuing to cover these wars despite so many of their journalists being killed in the last few years.
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Those who engineer wars don’t fight them. They don’t view troops as human beings. Civilians-the old, the young, and the everyday persons-don’t count. Animals don’t even cross their minds. It’s a game of strategies, one that hurts everyone it touches.
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Considering the DoD is in the hands of a dudebro who didn’t anticipate the obvious Iranian play for the Strait of Hormuz because he was too busy firing generals and doing shirtless pullups, I wouldn’t even call it strategy.
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No one ever gave a damn about children and animals in wars. Saw a movie with Jessica Chastain and how owner of a zoo tried to save as many animals as she could in WW2. True story.
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I saw this movie. She helped some Jewish people escape too. Good movie.
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Thanks for sharing this article. You’re correct in that we barely hear anything about the human side of war, whether it be in Iran, Lebanon, Israel, or (lest we forget) Ukraine. For those interested in helping with the relocation and saving of animals, check out Network for Animals where you can choose which location you want your donation to go to: https://networkforanimals.org/donate/
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Thanks, cath. Network for Animals has an excellent charity rating and does good work.
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