The Iran War Will Not Help the Iranian People

Every time the government says we’re going to free people by starting a war in the Middle East, those people end up worse off.¹ Every single time.

We have been here before. The justifications shift from war to war — weapons of mass destruction, regional security, counterterrorism — but the humanitarian argument is always in there somewhere. It’s a reliable hook because Americans genuinely do care about people living under brutal governments. It’s just how we are. And it gets used every time.¹

Iraq

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the reasons for war shifted as the months went on — weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there, links to al-Qaeda that didn’t exist — but the humanitarian argument was always part of the pitch. Saddam Hussein was a genuine monster. His people were suffering, and we were going to fix that.^{2, 16}

Before the invasion, Iraq had one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the Middle East: trained doctors, functioning hospitals, a professional class. It had taken generations to build.^{7, 8}

Within four years, half of Iraq’s 18,000 doctors had fled. Hospitals lost electricity and medical supplies. Six years in, most homes had only a few hours of power a day, and seventy percent of the population lacked clean drinking water.^{7, 8} As of 2023, more than 7 million people are currently refugees, and nearly 8 million people are internally displaced.⁶

In Fallujah, researchers have documented a 17-fold increase in birth defects. Studies found lead in every bone sample tested and uranium in nearly a third. The war left a chemical legacy in children who were not even born when it began.²¹

“We struggled for years to try to put it back together again.” — Ray Odierno, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq¹⁶

The government that followed was unstable. The disbanding of the Iraqi military put 400,000 armed men out of work, many of whom joined insurgent groups. Out of that instability, ISIS emerged and seized territory the size of the United Kingdom. The United States spent another decade fighting it.^{9, 10}

Libya

In 2011, NATO intervened in Libya under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s forces. The humanitarian case was cleaner than Iraq — there was genuine international authorization, a real threat to civilian populations, and no fabricated intelligence. By the standards of these interventions, it was the most justified one.^{11, 17}

Before the intervention, Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa. Per capita income was about $11,000. Healthcare was free. The country had no external debt. Whatever Gaddafi was — and he was brutal and erratic — Libya functioned.¹¹

The intervention broke that system. Hospitals were damaged or destroyed and medical supply shortages spread. More than a million people required humanitarian aid, and hundreds of thousands were displaced.^{12, 23}

The state collapsed with it. Libya fractured into competing militias and rival governments. Oil production, the backbone of the economy, was repeatedly blockaded and damaged. GDP per capita fell sharply, and basic goods like bread and fuel became unreliable.^{11, 23}

The human consequences have been severe and ongoing. Migrants and detainees face torture, forced labor, and sexual violence. Armed groups on all sides have carried out killings, enslavement, and enforced disappearances for years.^{12, 13}

In 2023, the Derna dams collapsed and killed over 11,000 people. The systems that prevent that — maintenance, inspection, emergency response — were already gone.¹³

We went in to protect the Libyan people. We created a prolonged humanitarian collapse.¹¹

Afghanistan

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001. The war lasted twenty years and cost over $2 trillion. That total includes hundreds of billions for military operations, increases to the Pentagon’s base budget attributable to the war, State Department spending, and more than $500 billion in interest on the debt used to finance the war.²⁰  Future long-term care for veterans is projected separately and will add trillions more.¹⁴

The war was retaliation for September 11 — a campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. From a humanitarian point of view, it looked like it was working. Afghan women were freed from the Taliban, girls went to school, and a civil society was being built. This lasted about 3 years.²²

When the United States withdrew in 2021, the Taliban walked back in and took the country in eleven days. Everything that had been built — the schools, the civil institutions, the women in government — collapsed with the same speed.²²

Comparing Afghanistan before the invasion to after the war, food insecurity increased, poverty increased, and child malnutrition increased. The health system is now near collapse, with clinics underfunded and unable to meet basic needs. Humanitarian aid remains critically short.²²

Displacement continues. Millions have been forced from their homes, and in 2023 alone over a million Afghans were pushed back from Pakistan and Iran, refugees from the country we spent two decades rebuilding. Climate shocks — droughts, floods, and earthquakes — have destroyed homes and crops, leaving millions facing winter hardship without adequate shelter.²²

Violence did not end with the withdrawal. Explosive remnants of war continue to kill and maim civilians, many of them children. Attacks by ISIS-K have killed and injured civilians across the country.²²

Women and girls have been pushed out of public life. Education has been restricted. Work has been restricted. Access to healthcare is limited by gender rules. International observers describe the conditions as a reversal to pre-2002 levels.²²

The damage is not limited to Afghanistan alone. Veterans of the war have died by suicide in numbers comparable to those killed in combat. The war destroyed people on both ends.¹⁴

We went in to liberate the Afghan people. We left them to the Taliban and a government that doesn’t function, a failing health system, and a country seeded with unexploded bombs.^{14, 22}

The Pattern

Overall, the post-9/11 U.S. war zones documented by the Brown University Costs of War project account for over 940,000 people killed by direct war violence, with civilian deaths exceeding 432,000.³ An estimated 3.6 to 3.8 million more died from indirect causes, including the collapse of healthcare systems, the loss of clean water and food infrastructure, and the spread of disease when hospitals stop functioning. Thirty-eight million people were displaced.^{3, 6}

These are not the numbers of a rescue operation. These are the numbers of a catastrophe.³

Every one of those wars included humanitarian rhetoric, planning, and coalition-building in the public framing. They were planned in the sense that the administrations behind them had a theory of what came next. Transition and reconstruction plans existed. They were often under-resourced, poorly coordinated, or based on flawed assumptions about governance and societal transformation. The theories were wrong, and the plans were inadequate, but they existed. They failed anyway.^{16, 17}

The same pattern is unfolding in Iran today.^{24, 25}

Iran

The war on Iran is four weeks old. It’s already been long enough to destroy the work of generations.^{24, 25}

Airstrikes have hit the systems that make ordinary life possible: power plants, gas refineries, ports, hospitals, schools. On March 7, four refineries in Tehran burned at once, sending columns of smoke over the capital and cutting electricity across multiple provinces. Iran generates more than 90 percent of its power from gas. Already, a significant share of that capacity is gone.^{24, 25}

When the power fails, the consequences stack quickly. Water treatment plants shut down. Refrigeration disappears. Hospitals lose critical systems. Illness follows. Hospitals themselves have not been spared. Doctors and nurses are working without stable electricity, without reliable sterilization, without supplies, and without safe spaces to treat the injured.²⁴

“Attacking the infrastructure of my country, including water and electricity, means the indirect killing of thousands of innocent people lying on Iranian hospital beds.” — Hossein Kermanpour, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Health²⁴

Hospitals have been hit repeatedly. At least 29 medical facilities have been damaged, 10 forced to shut down, and dozens of clinics and ambulances destroyed or disabled.^{24, 25}

Schools have been damaged across at least 20 provinces. Classes are cancelled mid-term and entire districts of children with nowhere to go. If their schools are being bombed out, that means their neighborhoods are at risk.²⁵

Millions have been displaced. Shelters are overcrowded, and in many cases unreachable. Roads and ports—lifelines for aid—have been struck or rendered unusable. In some regions, getting food, medicine, or fuel from one city to another has become nearly impossible.^{24, 25}

“Though it is day, the sun cannot be seen in Tehran today because of all the smoke following the US and Israel bombing Tehran’s oil refineries. People on the ground describe it as armageddon.” — Trita Parsi, Quincy Institute²⁵

Residents in Tehran report toxic black rain falling after fuel depot strikes, coating cars, streets, and skin.²⁵

“It is raining oil in Tehran this morning after major airstrikes on oil facilities in the South and West of the Iranian capital.” — Frederik Pleitgen, CNN correspondent, March 8, 2026²⁵

Cultural loss is mounting alongside human displacement. At least 56 historical sites have been damaged, including UNESCO-listed areas in Isfahan—places that survived empires, invasions, and centuries of upheaval, only to be destroyed in a matter of moments.²⁵

Civilians are bearing the brunt of US and Israel’s weeks-long campaign.^{24, 25}

The people who survive this war will inherit a country without functioning power, water, hospitals, or schools. That is what every population inherited after every one of these interventions. The record on what comes next is not ambiguous. It is sitting in the sections above.^{1, 3}

This One Is Different – In a Bad Way

More than 940,000 people were killed by direct war violence in U.S. post-9/11 war zones — over 432,000 of them civilians. Another 3.6 to 3.8 million died from what followed: collapsed healthcare systems, contaminated water, food shortages, disease moving through populations with no hospitals left to treat them. Thirty-eight million people lost their homes.^{[3, 6]}

Previous administrations had war-gamed an Iran intervention for decades and kept walking away from it, because every scenario ran into the same unsolvable problems: regional escalation, Hormuz closure, no viable path to a stable government.[26] The other Middle East wars had something in common beyond the humanitarian rhetoric. Each one had an objective. Each had a transition theory–however flawed, underfunded, or built on false assumptions.

Iran is different. The objective has shifted at least four times since the opening strikes — from backing protesters, to eliminating a nuclear program, to destroying ballistic missile capacity, to opening the Strait of Hormuz. “Step one of any plan is to establish a goal,” said Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. “The United States has this backwards. We have the targeting, but we don’t have a clear goal.”[26]

In his first address after the strikes, Trump told Iranians to “take over your government.” Iranian security forces had killed somewhere between 7,000 and 36,500 people in the streets for attempting exactly that — figures drawn from the regime’s own internal documents. He had just bombed their country. He was still bombing it. This was not a plan, and those were not the people to carry it out if it had been one.[26, 27, 28]

The humanitarian rhetoric is still there. It was always the constant. Everything else is gone.

These wars don’t leave people with better governments. War leaves them dead, and their roads, homes, businesses, and livelihoods in ruins. Destroying a country to “save” it is criminal.^{1, 3}

References

1. ↑ Bacevich, A. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. Oxford University Press; 2013.
2. ↑ Chomsky, N. Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. Metropolitan Books; 2003.
3. ↑ Savell, S. Human Cost of Post‑9/11 Wars: Direct and Indirect Deaths in Major War Zones. In: Human Costs of War. Costs of War, Brown University; updated 2023.
4. ↑ Iraq Body Count. Iraqi deaths from violence 2003–2011. Iraq Body Count; 2012.
5. ↑ Hagopian, A. et al. Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation. PLOS Medicine; 2013.
6. ↑ Cohen, D.; Miller, C. Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States’ Post‑9/11 Wars. Costs of War, Brown University; 2021.
7. ↑ Medact. Continuing Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq. Medact; 2014.
8. ↑ Dewachi, O. Insecurity, Displacement, and Public Health Impacts of the American Invasion of Iraq. In: Costs of War Publications. Brown University; 2013.
9. ↑ Dodge, T. Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism. International Institute for Strategic Studies/Routledge; 2012.
10. ↑ Gerges, F. ISIS: A History. Princeton University Press; 2016.
11. ↑ The Unintended Consequences of US Intervention in Libya. The Daily Economy; 2025.
12. ↑ Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) & UNSMIL. Desperate and Dangerous: Report on the Human Rights Situation of Migrants and Refugees in Libya. United Nations; 2018.
13. ↑ United Nations. OHCHR Lybia/Migrants Interview UN Audiovisual Library; 2026.
14. ↑ Crawford, N. Costs of the 20-year war on terror: $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths. Costs of War, Brown University; 2021.
15. ↑ Physicians for Social Responsibility et al. Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the “War on Terror”. PSR/IPPNW; 2015.
16. ↑ Rumsfeld, D. Known and Unknown: A Memoir. Sentinel; 2011.
17. ↑ Chollet, D. The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America’s Role in the World. PublicAffairs; 2016.
18. ↑ U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Strait of Hormuz Is the World’s Most Important Oil Transit Chokepoint. EIA; 2019.
19. ↑ U.S. Department of State. Iran Travel Advisory. U.S. State Department; accessed 2026.
20. ↑ International Committee of the Red Cross. Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (Protocol I). ICRC; 1977.
21. ↑ Birth Defects and the Toxic Legacy of War in Iraq. Kali Rubaii; 2020.
22. ↑ Afghanistan before and after 20 years of war (2001–2021). Costs of War, Brown University; 2022.
23. ↑ Libyan armed conflict 2011: Mortality, injury and population displacement. ScienceDirect.
24. ↑ REGIONAL IRAN ESCALATION MOBILITY MONITORING. IOM; 2026.
25. ↑ Iran war timeline: civilians bear brunt of US and Israel’s weeks-long campaign. The Guardian; 2026.
26. ↑ ‘No clear goal’: lack of Iran war plan has unleashed chaos and could stymie US military for decades, say critics. The Guardian; 2026.
27. ↑ Iran International Editorial Board. Over 36,500 killed in Iran’s deadliest massacre, documents reveal. Iran International; January 25, 2026.
28. ↑ Humayun, H. Iran’s supreme leader acknowledges thousands were killed in protests. CNN; 2026.

See Also

• Iraq Body Count analysis of deaths 2003–2011.
• A Model Humanitarian Intervention? Reassessing NATO’s Libya Campaign.