Residents of the Iranian capital of Tehran awoke on Sunday to an apocalyptic scene after the United States and Israel bombed the city’s oil storage facilities. A towering pillar of fire 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 — it’s already been struggling with a severe water shortage that earlier led President Masoud Pezeshkian to consider ordering an evacuation.
That might be exactly what the US and Israel want, however, to place maximum pressure on Iran to unconditionally surrender, as Trump recently demanded. Bombing critical infrastructure like oil storage facilities will make it significantly more difficult for authorities to maintain everyday life in Tehran.
Meanwhile, strikes on police stations, which have also been reported, will make the city less safe. Many residents may therefore soon leave, depopulating the capital.
Even if Iran still does not surrender unconditionally, the optics of the US and Israel striking its capital could be presented to their respective publics as further proof that they are winning the war, 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, placing serious stress on its security services, especially if the displaced begin rioting in desperation.
It was one thing for them to use lethal force against an unspecified number of anti-government rioters – whom authorities claimed were associated with terrorist groups and foreign intelligence agencies – as they rampaged through Tehran in January, and quite another to use lethal force against hungry citizens rioting in displacement camps.
Such footage could widen speculative divisions between the government and the security services, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) and allied militias, while drastically eroding pro-government sentiment among the broader population.
Iran may still not surrender unconditionally, however, in which case the US and Israel might expand their campaign of collective punishment to other major Iranian metropolises after testing it in Tehran, continuing until they achieve what they want.
Whether they will is debatable, but what is happening in Tehran is an indisputable expansion of the conflict from purely military targets to semi-military ones in ways that seriously endanger civilians.
To be clear, energy and other critical infrastructure are legitimate targets, as Russia has argued in defense of its strikes 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 fuel needed to continue fighting, the US and Israel are posing credible threats to civilians, even if those threats remain environmental for now.
If that does not lead to Iran’s unconditional surrender, it cannot be ruled out that the US and/or Israel might systematically target civilians on the pretext of what CENTCOM posted on social media – that 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.”
The war may be about to get considerably uglier.
This article was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished here with editing for clarity, fluency and updates on Trump’s response on Friday. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber here.
