Every night, US Central Command puts out a readout of its strikes on Iran, and every night the language is the same: command centers, air-defense sites, missile and drone capabilities, coastal-surveillance facilities [1]. The readouts do not mention civilian infrastructure [1]. Iranian authorities say the strikes have hit a good deal of it [2].
The clearest example is a seawater desalination plant at Bunji, in the southern port of Jask [2]. Its pumping station and power transformer were, by Iran's account, 'completely destroyed,' cutting off drinking water for about 10,000 people across roughly twenty villages - during a heatwave running above 100 degrees [2]. In Ahvaz, more than 200 patients were evacuated from Baghaei hospital [1].
Other sites reported struck over the seven nights include bridges, a railway station in Bandar Abbas, and a bottled-water plant in Dehloran [1]. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has called the strikes 'war crimes' [1]. Drinking-water installations that civilians depend on to survive are, under the Geneva Conventions, specifically protected from attack [1].
These figures come from Iranian authorities and have not been independently verified, and the United States has neither confirmed nor denied hitting the desalination plant [2]. Iran's Health Ministry's wider count - 50 killed and more than 500 injured since early July - is likewise its own [2].
What is not in question is the shape of the official account. The military's nightly description of the campaign is 'military infrastructure,' and the destruction of a plant that supplied water to 10,000 people in a heatwave is not in it [1][2]. Whether or not every Iranian figure holds, a war being described to the public as surgical has a civilian ledger that the description leaves off.
