The US & Israel Want To Depopulate Iran’s Capital

This war might be about to get a lot uglier.

Residents of the Iranian capital of Tehran awoke on Sunday to an apocalyptic scene after the US and Israel bombed Iran’s oil storage facilities. A sky-high flaming pillar emerged in the aftermath, toxic smoke clouded out the sun, and blackened rain fell on this city of around 10 million people. The environmental consequences alone could push Tehran to the breaking point after it’s already been struggling with a severe water shortage that earlier led President Masoud Pezeshkian to consider an evacuation.

That might be exactly what the US and Israel want, however, in order to place maximum pressure on Iran to unconditionally surrender like Trump recently demanded of it. In pursuit of this, the new policy of bombing critical infrastructure like oil storage facilities will make it much more difficult for the authorities to maintain everyday life in Tehran, while bombing police stations like has recently happened as well will make the city much less safe. Many residents might therefore soon leave and depopulate the capital.

Even if Iran still doesn’t unconditionally surrender, the optics of the US and Israel doing this to its capital could be presented by them to their respective publics as further proof that they’re winning the war, thus boosting morale at home amidst continued questions about the endgame. The rapid displacement of even a sizeable share of Tehran’s population would also worsen the country’s deepening humanitarian crisis, thus placing serious stress on its security services, especially if the displaced begin rioting.

It was one thing for them to use lethal force against an unclear number of anti-government rioters who the authorities claimed were associated with terrorist groups and foreign spy agencies as they rampaged Tehran in January and another entirely to use lethal force against hungry citizens rioting in camps. Such footage could widen speculative divisions between the government and the security services (IRGC and allied militias) while drastically reducing pro-government sentiment among the rest of the citizenry.

Iran might still not unconditionally surrender, however, in which case the US and Israel might expand their campaign of collective punishment against the population to other major Iranian metropolises after perfecting it in Tehran till they finally get what they want. Whether or not they will remains the subject of debate, but the point is that what’s happening in Tehran is the indisputable expansion of the conflict from purely military targets to semi-military ones in ways that seriously threaten civilians.

To be clear, energy and other critical infrastructure are legitimate targets as argued by Russia in defense of the strikes that it’s carried out against Ukraine’s power grid over the past four years, but deliberately destroying oil storage facilities in proximity to densely populated areas is morally questionable at best. Under the cover of depriving the armed forces of the fuel that they require to continue fighting, the US and Israel are posing credible threats to civilians, even if they’re only environmental for the time being.

If that doesn’t lead to Iran’s unconditional surrender, then it can’t be ruled out that the US and/or Israel might systematically target civilians on the pretext of what CENTCOM posted about how Iran “is using heavily populated civilian areas to conduct military operations…This dangerous decision risks the lives of all civilians in Iran since locations used for military purposes lose protected status and could become legitimate military targets under international law.” This war might thus be about to get a lot uglier.